The California Field Atlas

by Obi Kaufmann

Overview

#1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller

Winner, 2018 California Book Award Gold Medal (Notable Contribution to Publishing)

Winner, 2018 NCIBA Book of the Year Award (Regional Interest)

Finalist, 2018 Northern California Book Awards

"A gorgeously illustrated compendium."—Sunset

This lavishly illustrated atlas takes readers off the beaten path and outside normal conceptions of California, revealing its myriad ecologies, topographies, and histories in exquisite maps and trail paintings. Based on decades of exploring the backcountry of the Golden State, artist-adventurer Obi Kaufmann blends science and art to illuminate the multifaceted array of living, connected systems like no book has done before. Kaufmann depicts layer after layer of the natural world, delighting in the grand scale and details alike. The effect is staggeringly beautiful: presented alongside California divvied into its fifty-eight counties, for example, we consider California made up of dancing tectonic plates, of watersheds, of wildflower gardens. Maps are enhanced by spirited illustrations of wildlife, keys that explain natural phenomena, and a clear-sighted but reverential text. Full of character and color, a bit larger than life, The California Field Atlas is the ultimate road trip companion and love letter to a place.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597144025
Publisher:	Heyday
Publication date:	09/01/2017
Pages:	552
Sales rank:	488,647
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Growing up in the East Bay as the son of an astrophysicist and a psychologist, Obi Kaufmann spent most of high school practicing calculus and breaking away on weekends to scramble around Mount Diablo and map its creeks, oak forests, and sage mazes. Into adulthood, he would regularly journey into the mountains, spending more summer nights without a roof than with one. For Kaufmann, the epic narrative of the California backcountry holds enough art, science, mythology, and language for a hundred field atlases to come. When he is not backpacking, you can find the painter-poet at his desk in Oakland, posting @coyotethunder #trailpaintings on social media.

Editorial Reviews

#1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller

Winner, 2018 California Book Award Gold Medal (Notable Contribution to Publishing)

Winner, 2018 NCIBA Book of the Year Award (Regional Interest)

Finalist, 2018 Northern California Book Awards

"Every California household should have a copy of the 608-page atlas. … Start with Kaufmann’s introduction, because it encapsulates the author’s relationship with the landscape he so dearly loves. From there, read it frontward, backward or according to whatever topic piques an interest." —San Jose Mercury News

"A gorgeously illustrated compendium." —Sunset

"If you're looking for freeways or pathways, expressways or BART lines, this book can't help you. If, on the other hand, you're looking to get lost in the flora, fauna, and natural habitats that exist across California beyond the I-5, this is a wonderful little guide." —AFAR

"A modern-day masterpiece." —Santa Barbara Independent

"Transcend[s] the genre of nature writing." —Monterey County Weekly

"A revelation. Kaufmann educates and delights the reader simultaneously." —Mike Sonksen, Entropy

From the Publisher