Water, Land, and Law in the West The Limits of Public Policy, 1850–1920 Donald J. Pisani Foreword by Hal K. Rothman 248 pages, 6 x 9 Development of Western Resources Paper ISBN 978-0-7006-1111-9, $19.95 This volume features the best and most influential essays by Donald Pisani, one of our nation's leading environmental and western historians. Collectively, the essays highlight the central role played by land, water, and timber allocation in the American West and show how efforts to achieve justice and efficiency were compromised by the region's obsession with achieving rapid economic growth. Pisani's work underscores the importance of natural resources to the American vision of opportunity and social progress, as well as the limits of federal influence in resolving the complex tensions between national and local control, between government regulation and laissez-faire capitalism, between democratic and corporate power, and between development and conservation. His work reminds us that westerners, ever wary of any form of centralized planning, have been far more supportive of the marketplace than government direction, and he demonstrates just how difficult it is to alter natural resource policies to keep pace with changing times and values. For those already familiar with Pisani or those coming to him for the first time, this is an invaluable volume. Contents Enterprise and Equity: A Critique of Western Water Law in the Nineteenth Century The Origins of Western Water Law: Case Studies from Two California Mining Districts State vs. Nation: Federal Reclamation and Water Rights in the Progressive Era Squatter Law in California, 1850–1858 Land Monopoly in Nineteenth-Century California George Maxwell, the Railroads, and American Land Policy, 1899–1904 Forests and Conservation, 1865–1890 Forests and Reclamation, 1891–1911 Irrigation, Water Rights, and the Betrayal of Indian Allotment Reclamation and Social Engineering in the Progressive Era "Over the past decade, Donald J. Pisani has proven himself to be one of the nation's most thoughtful and meticulous scholars of natural resource law and its history. This book gathers together his most important essays. It is a collection that every student of American conservation policy will want to own."--William J. Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, 1848–1893 "Pisani's great scholarly virtue is his ability to reveal in the making and implementation of public policy the actual environmental consequences for people and the land. These essays show why he is a leading scholar of the American West."--Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 "Each of Pisani's pieces is a model of scholarship and makes a significant contribution in its own right. Collectively, they should prove invaluable to scholars in a wide range of disciplines."--Norris Hundley, author of The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s–1990s "A remarkable body of work that serves as a model for understanding the underlying premises of a society and its relationship to the physical world."--Hal K. Rothman, editor of Environmental History Review DONALD J. PISANI, Merrick Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, is the author of To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848–1902, and From Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850–1931.   Home | About the Press | Recent Awards | Contact Us | Order New Books: | By Author | By Subject | By Title | By Series Books in Print: | By Author | By Subject | By Title | By Series ©2007 University Press of Kansas 2502 Westbrooke Circle, Lawrence, KS 66045-4444 Phone (785) 864-4155; Fax (785) 864-4586