Now no longer well known or clearly recognizable as a region, the Tulare Lake Basin also once supported the densest non-agricultural population in North America. This population, of Yokut Indians, caused little change to the wild oasis environment. Today, however, the Basin bears the rigid imprint of the past two centuries of technological progress, culminating in the complete domination of the land and landscape by large-scale, corporate farming. Natural landmarks and boundaries are subordinate to cultural creations, and the identity of the region has waned with its assimilation into the uniform landscape of international agribusiness and with the gradual demise of the lake itself. After describing the geological processes that created the lake and basin, William Preston considers the values, attitudes to the environment, and aims and technologies that have characterized successive stages of human habitation, leaving their mark upon the land. Using innovative research techniques, and with insight derived from extensive personal knowledge of Tulare and its environs, he reconstructs the physical and cultural realities of each technological period: the Yokut subsistence culture and its disruption by Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers; early sheepherding, cattle ranching, and agricultural experimentation; the arrival of the railroad and of bonanza wheat farming in the late nineteenth century; the small farms stil lin existence during his own youth in Tulare; and, finally, the corporate, "world" farms of today. Integrating ecological and historical perspectives, Preston describes the concrete effects of cultural change upon the land and the land's reciprocal impact upon culture. Rather than just the story of this region, we are given the case history of its physical transformation by forces that have shaped all the Central Valley and California's large urban centers as well. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

Landscapes will soon no longer exist the way we know them. Global warming melts the Antarctic ice, slash and burn reduces the forests, rivers die of industrial pollution, grassland gives way to cities as the human population grows. How do photographic artists respond? Do they glorify nature or is it their aim to enlighten the spectator?Vanishing Landscapes provides different viewpoints from twenty internationally renowned photographers including Robert Adams, Edward Burtynsky, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Joel Sternfield, and Thomas Struth, with short commentaries by the artists, and an introduction by John Berger. About 30 of the photographs were specially commisioned for this book.

This book takes readers on a leisurely journey through a bygone era with fascinating accounts of canals, corduroy roads, and turnpikes, waterwheels and icehouses, colorful road signs and their painters, circus folk, and more. Brimming with anecdotes about people and the times, this delightful narrative remains a milestone of Americana. 81 black-and-white illustrations.

In this book, O'Gorman treats both the people and the sheds with the respect and admiration their precarious presence requires."--BOOK JACKET.

Over two decades of turmoil and change in the Middle East, steered via the history-soaked landscape of Palestine. This new edition includes a previously unpublished epigraph in the form of a walk. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was travelling through a vanishing landscape. These hills would have seemed familiar to Christ, until the day concrete was poured over the flora and irreversible changes were brought about by those who claim a superior love of the land. Six walks span a period of twenty-six years, in the hills around Ramallah, in the Jerusalem wilderness and through the ravines by the Dead Sea. Each walk takes place at a different stage of Palestinian history since 1982, the first in the empty pristine hills and the last amongst the settlements and the wall. The reader senses the changing political atmosphere as well as the physical transformation of the landscape. By recording how the land felt and looked before these calamities, Raja Shehadeh attempts to preserve, at least in words, the Palestinian natural treasures that many Palestinians will never know.

From Francis Alÿs and Ursula Biemann to Vivan Sundaram, Allora & Calzadilla, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy, some of the most compelling artists today are engaging with the politics of land use, including the growth of the global economy, climate change, sustainability, Occupy movements, and the privatization of public space. Their work pivots around a set of evolving questions: In what ways is land, formed over the course of geological time, also contemporary and formed by the conditions of the present? How might art contribute to the expansion of spatial and environmental justice? Editors Emily Eliza Scott and Kirsten Swenson bring together a range of international voices and artworks to illuminate this critical mass of practices. One of the first comprehensive treatments of land use in contemporary art, Critical Landscapes skillfully surveys the stakes and concerns of recent land-based practices, outlining the art historical contexts, methodological strategies, and geopolitical phenomena. This cross-disciplinary collection is destined to be an essential reference not only within the fields of art and art history, but also across those of cultural geography, architecture and urban planning, environmental history, and landscape studies.