LITQUAKE: The State of Water: Understanding California's Most Precious Resource with author Obi Kaufmann

Award-winning writer Obi Kaufman offers an illustrated guide to the ways we conserve, use, abuse and restore water--the source of life and habitat in California.
Obi Kaufmann, author of the best-selling California Field Atlas, turns his attention to the Golden State's most complex and controversial resource: water. In this new book, full-color maps unravel the braided knot of California's water infrastructure and ecosystmes. Yet this built world depends upon the biosphere, and in The State of Water Kaufmann argues that environmental conservation and restoration efforts are necessary as a matter of human survival. 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.

Growing up in the East Bay as the son of an astrophysicist and a psychologist, Obi Kaufmann spent most of high school practicing calculus and breaking away on weekends to scramble around Mount Diablo and map its creeks, oak forests, and sage mazes. Into adulthood, he would journey into the mountains, spending more summer nights without a roof than with one. For Kaufmann, the narrative of the California backcountry holds enough art, science, mythology, and language for a hundred field atlases to come. His website is https://www.coyoteandthunder.com.