Craig Jones's book The Mountains That Remade America reflects on the Sierra Nevada range and how those mountains have changed the way Americans live, from ski towns to national parks, fresh fruit to environmental lawsuits. Whether and where there was gold to be mined redefined land, mineral, and water laws. Where rain falls (and where it doesn’t) determines whose fruit grows on trees and whose appears on slot machines. The book combines geology with history to show how the particular forces and conditions that created the Sierra Nevada have influenced daily life in the United States, both in the past and into the present day.
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