Product Description

A critically acclaimed, best-selling history of California centering on the untold story of America's biggest farmer who controls hundreds of thousands of acres and billions of dollars of water rights in the heart of the state.

J.G. Boswell is the biggest farmer in America. Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman of the Los Angeles Times have teased from this notoriously reclusive business titan the fascinating tale of how his family transplanted themselves from plantation Georgia to gain control of the center of California, converting lush wetlands into vast cotton fields. Critically acclaimed and a Times bestseller, the paperback edition of The King of California is ripe for discovery by a whole new audience eager to learn of one of the great untold stories of the American West. Hailed by Joan Didion for its "masterful reporting, invigorating narrative, a deep understanding of California and how it works-this is a flat-out wonderful book about growing cotton and making a fortune in the San Joaquin."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97114 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-15
• Released on: 2005-02-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

From The New Yorker
This meticulous narrative of the rise of the cotton magnate James G. Boswell begins in the nineteen-twenties, when his family was driven from Georgia by boll-weevil infestations and brought its plantation ways to California's San Joaquin Valley. Not to be defeated by nature again, the Boswells leveed and dammed Tulare Lake, the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi, to the point of extinction. In its six-hundred-square-mile basin they grew cotton, while in Los Angeles office towers they built one of the country's largest agricultural operations, swallowing small farms and multimillion-dollar subsidies with equal vigor. Arax and Wartzman strive for evenhandedness but acknowledge the costs of Big Ag—such as evaporation ponds with selenium levels so high that ducks are born with corkscrewed beaks and no eyes, and the recurrent "hundred-year floods," stubborn attempts by the old lake to reassert itself.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist
You may never have heard of him, but J. G. Boswell controls the biggest farming empire in America. In the early part of the twentieth century, his family moved from Georgia to California, where they drained one of the country's biggest lakes, Tulare Lake, and planted cotton. Soon their cotton empire became the richest and most technologically sophisticated on the planet. This book is many stories, all rolled into one epic. It's the story of the Boswells from the 1800s to the present day; of cotton farming in America; of California itself; and of the evolution of race relations as the country dragged itself out of the era of slavery and, not at all smoothly, into the modern era. Written in a lively style that matches the bigger-than-life qualities of its subject, the book is far more exciting than you might think the story of a cotton farmer would be. With proper marketing, it could smash through genre barriers and become the Seabiscuit of agricultural biography! David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"A rollicking tale. . . ." -- Raleigh News & Observer

Customer Reviews

A grand sweeping book.
I couldn't put this book down! Arax did it again. This is a grand sweeping history of the J G Boswell Company and the Tulare Lake bottom they farm. A few times the book described events and people I personally knew and they got it exactly right. This is a good balanced history and a story that really needed telling. For most people the San Joaquin Valley is almost a complete blank, for many who live here it is precisely where the plantation meets the rancho. Reading this epic book about JG Boswell will go a long way towards explaining why and whatever happened to the biggest lake west of the Mississippi.

LARGEST LAKE IN THE US DRAINED FOR AGRICULTURE
Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman have compiled and written a wonderfully comprehensive book on the struggle between man and nature as well as on man and the political machine. The story of J.G. Boswell and the taking of Tulare Lake is nothing short of an incredible tale of how a family of humble beginnings could become the largest farming operation in the United States. Arax and Wartzman are to be congratulated for their survival through years of research and writing of a book that will remain a classic of California history for years to come. Seen by many who are connected with the Boswell empire as a threat, the book lays out the details of how the company systematically gained thousands of acre feet of water rights in a drought-threatened San Joaquin Valley. It is a well rounded book telling a fantastic true story. The Boswell company should be proud of their success as should Mark and Rick in theirs. Booksellers in the San Joaquin Valley can't keep it in stock and have sold thousands of copies to local residents. It is a story that people want to know about.

Surfaced and Harpooned
This far-reaching book is quite an accomplishment in biography and investigative journalism. Arax and Wartzman cover the history of the immense Boswell farming company of California, and the two guys named J.G. (the founding uncle and the current chairman, his nephew) who built the company into the largest cotton operation on Earth. Through cutthroat competitive instincts and political wheeling-and-dealing, the Boswells amassed tens of thousands of acres in California's Central Valley, and were instrumental in eliminating what was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, as the former Tulare Lake was transformed into a festering network of levees, canals, and cesspools dedicated to the mass production of cotton. Thus, the Boswells built the area's environment, culture, and economics for their own profitability.

The book also serves as a great exploration of the business of factory farming, detailing the racism and poverty experienced by Black and Mexican workers, as well as the shifty agricultural and hydrological politics of Big Ag in California - as the Boswells and their competitors/allies buy politicians, stack laws and regulations in their favor, and claim flood control as a reason to alter the natural course of rivers and to completely drain the vast Tulare Lake. Best of all, we see how big business really works out West, with the hypocrisy of so-called rugged outdoorsmen (actually pampered CEO's) who incessantly rail against government interference while also taking in millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that are meant to help the little guy. This book is immensely informative but does often get tied up in unnecessary details, such as descriptions of petty political shenanigans in the construction of a nearby dam. But the motto of the Boswell clan has been that a whale can't be harpooned if it doesn't come to the surface (a legacy of silence and obfuscation), but Arax and Wartzman have deftly cracked into the wall of secrecy surrounding the Boswells and their often ill-gotten empire, [~doomsdayer520~]