| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.2

Book Review

Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles. Edited by William Deverell and Greg Hise. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. viii + 350 pp. Tables, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.
During the last fifteen years, a number of environmental historians have deconstructed the long-held view that wilderness is natural and cities are artificial. Culture is widely recognized as an important component of American wilderness; at the same time, nature is now central to any understanding of American urban development. But then there is Los Angeles. For most Americans, no city (with the possible exception of Las Vegas) is so unnatural, so divorced from the real, so plastic. In Land of Sunshine, a number of talented scholars tell the environmental history of this apparent simulacrum.	1
Three essays address the city's early natural and human history. Prairie covered the plains of Southern California (including Los Angeles), and the almost complete destruction of this ecosystem is the topic of Paula Schiffman's essay. L. Mark Raab argues that pre-Columbian California was neither paradise by default nor by design. Southern California Indians existed in a dynamic and sometimes punishing relationship to food supplies and a changing climate. Karen Clay and Werner Troesken identify drought as an important factor in Mexican land loss during the early American period.	2
A number of essays address twentieth-century issues of race and class. Daniel Johnson chronicles conflict pitting working-class homeowners against industrialists and their supporters over the subject of pollution. Christopher G. Boone implicates early twentieth-century zoning regulations for disproportionate toxic exposure to the largely Latino East Side. Jennifer Walch and Unna Lassiter examine contemporary Chicana and Latina views of animals. Douglas Sackman explores the cultural and racial politics of Anglo-American gardening.	3
Three articles tackle Los Angeles's vexed relationship with water. Blake Gumprecht argues that even before flood control engineers entombed the Los Angeles River in concrete, the city had "killed" the waterway through diversions, dumping, and industrial development. Jared Orsi addresses the limitations of the never-neutral discourse and practice of flood control engineering in Los Angeles. John McPhee's classic essay, "Los Angeles Against the Mountains," chronicles the city's Herculean efforts to control water-laden debris flows off the San Gabriel Mountains.	4
Several contributions explore the theme of perceiving nature. In a standout essay, Jennifer Price suggests thirteen revealing ways of viewing nature in a city that, she writes, represents the "Death Star" to many nature lovers (p. 222). William McClung discusses early twentieth-century booster photographs and Michael Dawson addresses changes in Southern California landscape photography during the early twentieth century.	5
In other essays in this anthology, Paul Sabin addresses the struggle between oil companies, on the one hand, and tourist and residential real estate interests, on the other, over the fate of the southern California shore and Tom Sitton chronicles the role of the Haynes Foundation in Los Angeles urban planning. In the collection's epilogue, Robert Gottlieb suggests that a new "environmental ethic of place" is emerging in Los Angeles (p. 294).	6
Unlike the flood control experts that Orsi studies, the editors of this book (as well as many of the contributors) do not claim political neutrality. Their hope is that by pointing out the roads not taken or not even seen because of politics, impoverished planning frameworks, cultural biases, or lack of imagination, Los Angelenos will think about their city and its environment in new ways. As William Deverell and Greg Hise's discussion of the broad-based coalition behind the restoration of the Los Angeles River suggests, tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents already have incorporated some of the lessons of their city's troubled environmental history and are thinking about planning in broader, more inclusive, and more sustainable ways.	7
The collection is not without its weaknesses. The absence of anything by Mike Davis, arguably the dean of Los Angeles environmental history, is a shortcoming. Much more also could be said about fire, park space and recreation, disease, water use, and transportation, among other topics. Still, the anthology is an important contribution to the growing literature on urban environmental history and a wonderful introduction to a city that is notoriously placeless.	8
Colin Fisher is an assistant professor of history at the University of San Diego. He is working on a history of working-class nature tourism in and around Chicago.

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