Karen Piper is Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Missouri-Columbia and author of "Cartographic Fictions: Maps, Race, and Identity." She lives in Columbia, Missouri.
"To water the lawns of suburbia, the L.A. Dept. of Water and Power
turned Owens Lake into a toxic dustbowl and poisoned the childhood
of Karen Piper and thousands of others. In this extraordinary book,
Piper uncovers the full story of California's environmental crime
of the century."--Mike Davis, author of "City of Quartz" and
"Planet of Slums""" """Beyond the eco-thriller aspects of this
book, Piper is exploring something far more complicated than a
villain and victim, a city's thirst, a valley's dust; she is using
the water to ask questions about the notion of development and
American assumptions about progress toward the public good."-- "Los
Angeles Times"""
"Another compelling reason not to breathe in L.A...Throughout,
Piper writes with prickly, if controlled, anger, much in the
kindred spirit of Mark Davis's City of Quartz, which bookends this
neatly. The tone is fitting....Readers who admire Davis's work and
that of the late Marc Reisner will find this fine entry in the
library of apocalyptic Californiana of urgent
interest."--"Kirkus""" " [A] systematic approach to the same story
outlined in the movie "Chinatown," in which powerful forces stole
water from rural areas of California to foster development in Los
Angeles."--"Columbia Daily Tribune" ""Left in the Dust" is a
scathing critique of water imperialism in the Owens Valley. In its
relentless thirst for water, Los Angeles transformed a once-lush
valley into a desert and ruined the lives of the people who lived
and worked there. By demonstrating how ecological changes in the
Valley injured people of color in particular, Piper brilliantly
exposes the story of the Los Angeles aqueduct into an environmental
justice tragedy"--Andrew Hurley, author of "Environmental
Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary,
Indiana, 1945-1980," and "Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer
Parks: Chasing the American Dream in the Postwar Consumer Culture"
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