James Laxer

In this digital publication, James Laxer writes a diary of the time he spent in California in the winter of 2014 during the great drought.  In Los Angeles and the vicinity of Palm Springs, Laxer looks at the golden state at a time when its way of life is facing an existential threat as a consequence of the worst drought in the history of the state. 

To Laxer, Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley, where the lawns and golf courses are lush green, has the feel of the last days of Pompeii, as the aquifer below dries up and diminished snowfall far to the north in Wyoming and Colorado reduce the volume of water flowing into the life giving Colorado River. 

Will California and the rest of the parched South West of the United States now make a grab for Canadian water?

Laxer has frequently written first hand accounts about life in the United States, California in particular.

In 2001, the New Press in New York published his book Discovering America: Travels in the Land of Guns, God and Corporate Gurus, which was originally published in Toronto by Penguin Books as Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America.

In 2013, following Laxer’s stay in the vicinity of San Diego, House of Anansi published two E works he wrote there: A House Divided: Watching America’s Descent into Civil Conflict; and Travels through the Golden State: A California Diary.