1. Introduction : reflections in a ditch -- 2. Taxonomy : the flow of power in history -- Wittfogel, Marx, and the ecology of power -- The local subsistence mode -- The agrarian state mode -- The capitalist state mode -- 3. Incipience : a poor man's paradise -- t Confronting the desert : death and life -- The Lord's beavers -- In the shadow of the Rockies -- The redemption of California -- The ideology of Democratic conquest -- 4. Florescence : the state and the desert -- "A commonwealth within itself" -- Passages to India -- A long, strong rope -- Failure -- 5. Florescence : the grapes of wealth -- A place named Imperial -- "I never knowed they was anything like her" -- Who rules the Great Valley? -- 6. Empire : water and the modern West -- "Total use for greater wealth" -- Accumulation and legitimation -- Leviathan ailing -- 7. Conclusion : nature, freedom, and the West
Notes
Reprint. Originally published: New York : Pantheon, 1985