Culture January 1, 1

Most Californians know the inland agricultural heartland of their state as a smoggy blur. Travelers race through it north and south at eighty miles per hour on Interstate 5, windows rolled up to block the stench of thousands of cattle on megaranches. The rest of the country takes fleeting note of the long, flat San Joaquin Valley only during a periodic food-contamination scare—E. coli–laced spinach, say, or raw milk linked to sick children. In his new collection of essays and reporting, Mark Arax tells us what we are missing.