"[A] gorgeously illustrated compendium."--Sunset This lavishly illustrated atlas takes readers off the beaten path and outside normal conceptions of California, revealing its myriad ecologies, topographies, and histories in exquisite maps and trail paintings. Based on decades of exploring the backcountry of the Golden State, artist-adventurer Obi Kaufmann blends science and art to illuminate the multifaceted array of living, connected systems like no book has done before. Kaufmann depicts layer after layer of the natural world, delighting in the grand scale and details alike. The effect is staggeringly beautiful: presented alongside California divvied into its fifty-eight counties, for example, we consider California made up of dancing tectonic plates, of watersheds, of wildflower gardens. Maps are enhanced by spirited illustrations of wildlife, keys that explain natural phenomena, and a clear-sighted but reverential text. Full of character and color, a bit larger than life, The California Field Atlas is the ultimate road trip companion and love letter to a place.

An epic, gloriously illustrated journey up and down California's shoreline California's coastline is world famous, an endless source of fascination and fantasy, but there is no book about it like this one. Obi Kaufmann, author-illustrator of The California Field Atlas and The Forests of California, now turns his attention to the 1,200 miles of the Golden State where the land meets the ocean. Bursting with color, The Coasts of California is in Kaufmann's signature style, fusing science with art and pure poetic reverie. And much more than a survey of tourist spots, Coasts is a full immersion into the astonishingly varied natural worlds that hug California's shoreline. With hundreds of gorgeous watercolor maps and illustrations, Kaufmann explores the rhythms of the tides, the lives of sea creatures, the shifting of rocks and sand, and the special habitats found on California's islands. At the book's core is an expansive, detailed walk down the California Coastal Trail, including maps of parks along the way--a wealth of knowledge for any coast-lover. The Coasts of California is a geographic epic, an odyssey in nature, a grand and glorious book for a grand and glorious part of the world.

Obi Kaufmann, author of the best-selling California Field Atlas, turns his artful yet analytical attention to the Golden State's single most complex and controversial resource: water. In this new book, full-color maps unravel the braided knot of California's water infrastructure and ecosystems, exposing a history of unlimited growth in spite of finite natural resources--a history that has led to its current precarious circumstances. Yet this built world depends upon the biosphere, and in The State of Water Kaufmann argues that environmental conservation and restoration efforts are necessary not only for ethical reasons but also as a matter of human survival. Offering nine perspectives to illustrate the most pressing challenges facing California's water infrastructure, from dams to species revitalization, Kaufmann reveals pragmatic yet inspiring solutions to how water in the West can continue to support agriculture, municipalities, and the environment. Interspersed throughout with trail paintings of animals that might yet survive under a caring and careful water ethic, Kaufmann shows how California can usher in a new era of responsible water conservation, and--perhaps most importantly--how we may do so together.

"This book brings to life one of the most creative (and necessary) human endeavors and makes understandable the incredible complexity of California agriculture, one of the world's most daring experiments in feeding itself. A valuable resource that should be read by everyone—not just those of us who farm, but all of us who depend on farms."—Michael Ableman, farmer, photographer, and author of From the Good Earth, On Good Land, and Fields of Plenty. "No understanding of this state is possible without an understanding of its agriculture; that's how important this subject is."—Gerald Haslam, author of Workin' Man Blues: Country Music in California "A fascinating, intriguing, and sometimes even humorous exploration of California's agriculture, from broccoli to marijuana and beyond. At long last, a book everyday people can read to understand the state's biggest industry."—Louis Warren, University of California, Davis

The most comprehensive field guide available to the flora and fauna of California--a portable, essential companion for visitors and residents alike--from the go-to reference source for over 18 million nature lovers. This compact volume contains: An easy-to-use field guide for identifying 1,000 of the state's wildflowers, trees, mushrooms, mosses, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, butterflies, mammals, and much more; A complete overview of California's natural history, covering geology, wildlife habitats, ecology, fossils, rocks and minerals, clouds and weather patterns and night sky; An extensive sampling of the area's best parks, preserves, beaches, forests, islands, and wildlife sanctuaries, with detailed descriptions and visitor information for 50 sites and notes on dozens of others. The guide is packed with visual information -- the 1,500 full-color images include more than 1,300 photographs, 14 maps, and 16 night-sky charts, as well as 150 drawings explaining everything from geological processes to the basic features of different plants and animals.

Those of us who live in California know that it is an amazing place, and one of the reasons our state is so unique is the incredible diversity of life throughout its length and breadth. This atlas shows what the diversity of life in California is and where such resources are located.

What makes a place? Rebecca Solnit reinvents the traditional atlas, searching for layers of meaning & connections of experience across San Francisco.

The Baja California Plant Field Guide is a manual to native and naturalized plants of the Baja California peninsula, Mexico. It is a useful guide for the entire Sonoran Desert and for Southern California, as over 50% of the species covered also occur in these regions. Over 715 different plants in 111 plant families are identified (most in both English and Spanish), with both scientific and common names and detailed descriptions. Many species are illustrated with color photographs. Descriptions entail plant habit and height; stem, leaf, flower, and fruit morphology; range; elevation; pollination biology; ethnobotanical uses; and discriminating comparisons with close relatives. This book is intended for everyone from the interested novice to the professional botanist.

Preface : united by nature, guided by science -- Extreme events, life in the new normal -- Big bay to tech town -- A changing harvest -- Keeping forests green and snow white -- Climate canaries -- Los Angeles plants itself -- Riding the California current.

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction Featuring a new afterword by David Mitchell and a new introduction by Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England, to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok, and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.