Why read Crossing the Next Meridian?

Book cover of Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West

Book description

In Crossing the Next Meridian, Charles F. Wilkinson, an expert on federal public lands, Native American issues, and the West's arcane water laws explains some of the core problems facing the American West now and in the years to come. He examines the outmoded ideas that pervade land use and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Crossing the Next Meridian as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Adam M. Sowards

Author

This classic furnishes the best foundation for understanding land, water, and wildlife issues in the American West—and that necessarily means the public lands. Charles Wilkinson tacks from the past to the present, from law to history to ecology, effortlessly. What makes Crossing the Next Meridian so valuable is Wilkinson showing how nineteenth-century laws—the “lords of yesterday” in his apt phrasing—continued to guide the policy and politics around public lands and resources through the twentieth century. Packed with scholarship, legal reasoning, and on-the-ground reporting, Crossing the Next Meridian laid out clearly why the West I have lived in my whole…

From Adam's list on The best books for bringing the public into the public lands.