The California Field Atlas

About this book

#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.