The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland

This marvelously evocative book by Stephen Johnson, Gerald Haslam, and Robert Dawson -- all natives of the Great Central Valley of California -- is the first to explore in detail the rich natural and social history of the state's agricultural heartland.

        Gerald Haslam's text celebrates the tenacious people of the Valley, where hard work and ingenuity are the means to both survival and success. This is land that gives little but yields, under pressure, to the promise of a better future. Stephen Johnson's and Robert Dawson's stunning photographs reveal the beauty of this immense region as well as the delicate relationship between the land and the people who work it.

        Johnson's and Dawson's photographs -- which are complemented by engravings by Thomas Moran, paintings by Albert Bierstadt and William Hahn, and photographs by Carleton Watkins, Dorothea Lange, and Russell Lee -- bring home to us, as only visual images can, that it is up to us to safeguard the future of this endangered valley, and to conserve its extraordinary human and natural wealth.