Yes, climate change is responsible for the intensity of the droughts we see in California every summer. But capitalism really greased the wheels with this one. In The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, reporter Mark Arax offers a full history of California's Central Valley region, a swath of land so promising that a US government survey said it could "harvest all the cultivated products of New England and Florida at once." Financial interest in developing the land for agriculture (while paying the farmers very little) led to massive farming projects that more or less fucked up the whole water system. Despite all that, Arax, who was raised in the region and who has reported on it for his entire career, paints a gorgeous picture of the land and of the myriad subcultures still thriving or fighting to survive in that lonesome valley. by Rich Smith