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Revised edition of Reisner's classic study of the transformation of California's coasts, plains and valleys from aridity to 'irrigated paradise' and sprawling cities, in less than a hundred years. Drawing on more than a decade of painstaking research, he documents how the triumphs of water engineering that made this possible - diverting mighty rivers, huge dams, sucking up great lakes of groundwater - exacted a terrible price. In chilling detail he chronicles the ecological and human disasters on which 'Eden' has been built - an Eden that may be no more than a mirage.