"Walton first uses his magnifying glass to capture images of struggle in a California valley during a century and a half of transformation, then inverts it to scrutinize the American state, popular politics, and collective action in general. The maneuver is bold, the outcome stimulating."—Charles Tilly, New School for Social Research "A passionate and first rate historical adventure. The plot is as intricate, fascinating, and full of intrigue and detail as a Dickens or a Tolstoy novel."—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

An Enchanted Valley is a wonderfully vivid trip through rural France with author Edward Harper and his cultural historian lover as they search for peace, tranquility, and beauty. We had been in the village for six years now. The house was finished. We knew every nook and cranny of the area within a twenty-mile radius. The ebb and flow of the village had become a part of our lives each summer. The ten-year-old daughter of the lascivious school teacher had bloomed into a voluptuous teenager whose boyfriends roared into the village on scooters. Maurin's little dog no longer appeared on our doorsteps as his house stood shuttered and empty, the center of a vicious fight over the inheritance. But much remained the same. Every year the chatelain celebrated his birthday with a picnic and barbecue on the edges of his exotic forest. An immense pig was roasted over a pit and more than a hundred people attended, a mixture of his military comrades including the retired colonel of the regiment and some aging, but still menacing looking, paratroopers in their red berets. Gallons of Burdic in unmarked bottles chilled in ice-filled barrels stood next to tables with great washtubs of salad and gardianne, the superb spiced stew of the region.

Situated on the western edge of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and White-Inyo mountain ranges, Owens Valley has been home for thousands of years to the Owens Valley Paiute and their southern neighbors, the Panamint Shoshone. The willow baskets both groups created are noteworthy for their complex construction and durability, and their materials and designs reflected available resources as well as the seminomadic existence that characterized life in the Great Basin for generations. Since the mid-nineteenth-century arrival of non-Indians into the Valley, the baskets have changed. Weaving a Legacy places those changes in the context of the region's dramatic social history. In addition, the volume closely examines basketry techniques and technology, historic weavers and their lineages, contemporary weavers, and basket collectors. The text is extensively illustrated with black-and-white photographs of people, landscapes, and baskets. Among the legacies of these baskets are the stories they evoke, many of which the authors recount in this beautiful work.

The Owens Valley not only reveals much about the arid West's past, it also allows us to peer into, and perhaps influence, the region's future. The Lost Frontier now provides a yardstick against which recent environmental issues in the Owens Valley might be measured and offers insights into our options for protecting agriculture from urban growth.

Quinquennial supplements,1950/1954-1979/1983, compiled by Estelle A. Fidell, and others, published 1956-1984.