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The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land, and the Battle for Napa Valley
James Conaway picks up the story begun a decade ago in his earlier book about Napa Valley, the premier American wine country and a place synonymous with the good life. By now the struggle over the valley’s future has grown sharper and its success more glaring. Awash in dollars generated by the boom economy of the 1990s and the social ambitions it inspired, Napa is beset by too much of a good thing: new arrivals determined to have a vineyard of their own despite the fact that available land is running out, cult-wine producers in thrall to fabulously expensive “rocket juice” (cabernet sauvignon) that few locals can afford, established families wishing to hold on to the old ways, and camp followers caught up in the glamour of it all.
What has transformed a natural and agricultural beauty spot into a coveted global destination has left inevitable scars, and a small, impassioned band of environmentalists determine to resist further change. Alarmed by the wholesale felling of trees to make way for vines, the diminishment of the Napa River, and the decline in the health of the watershed, they strike back in a way rivets the valley and strongly divides the valley between those in favor of unbridled economic development and those insisting on limits.
Written by the author the New York Times credits with “a Saroyan-like sense of humor and and Balzac-like eye for detail,” The Far Side of Eden takes us to the frontlines of America’s ongoing conflicts about money, land, and power to tell a tale that has ramifications for us all.
What has transformed a natural and agricultural beauty spot into a coveted global destination has left inevitable scars, and a small, impassioned band of environmentalists determine to resist further change. Alarmed by the wholesale felling of trees to make way for vines, the diminishment of the Napa River, and the decline in the health of the watershed, they strike back in a way rivets the valley and strongly divides the valley between those in favor of unbridled economic development and those insisting on limits.
Written by the author the New York Times credits with “a Saroyan-like sense of humor and and Balzac-like eye for detail,” The Far Side of Eden takes us to the frontlines of America’s ongoing conflicts about money, land, and power to tell a tale that has ramifications for us all.
- GenresWineNonfictionHistory
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
4 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
James Conaway
27 books7 followersJames Conaway is a former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University, and the author of thirteen books, including Napa at Last Light and the New York Times bestseller, Napa: The Story of an American Eden. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Harper's, The New Republic, Gourmet, Smithsonian, and National Geographic Traveler. He divides his time between Washington, DC, and California.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 21, 2016
At its heart this is a book about property rights and the battles between environmentalists and property owners (be it developers or businesses large and small). The author stages the action with three main categories of characters:
1. Raging environmentalists, led by the thoroughly unlikable Chris Malan.
2. Raging libertarians, led by the thoroughly unlikable winery owner Stuart Smith.
3. Lovable moderates, led by the genuinely likable winery owner Hugh Davies.
Of course there are other types we meet along the way (Francis Ford Coppola the disgusting monetizer; Delia Viader the disgusting rulebreaker/lawbreaker; mega corporations; the disgusting nouveau riche) but the bulk of the narrative focuses on the Malan/Smith/Davies contingents. Ostensibly this is a book about wine, wineries and land development but ultimately I felt as if the Napa Valley aspect was merely an opportunity to give the book a setting and nothing more. There is some occasional talk about winemaking but not nearly as much as I had anticipated.
On the whole I liked the book and wanted to read it (the middle chapters were especially strong) but every now and then the author wrote with an annoyingly affected style that was very off-putting. I don't know that this is a book that anyone would particularly like or dislike. The parts about environmental impacts were solid but the flow of the book was very poor.
If you're looking for a book about the wine business you should probably go elsewhere. If you're looking for a good book about land use and nimbyism I highly recommend Show Me a Hero (by Lisa Belkin). (Speaking of Show Me a Hero, I watched a few episodes of the HBO miniseries and didn't particularly care for it so don't let that scare you away from the book.)
1. Raging environmentalists, led by the thoroughly unlikable Chris Malan.
2. Raging libertarians, led by the thoroughly unlikable winery owner Stuart Smith.
3. Lovable moderates, led by the genuinely likable winery owner Hugh Davies.
Of course there are other types we meet along the way (Francis Ford Coppola the disgusting monetizer; Delia Viader the disgusting rulebreaker/lawbreaker; mega corporations; the disgusting nouveau riche) but the bulk of the narrative focuses on the Malan/Smith/Davies contingents. Ostensibly this is a book about wine, wineries and land development but ultimately I felt as if the Napa Valley aspect was merely an opportunity to give the book a setting and nothing more. There is some occasional talk about winemaking but not nearly as much as I had anticipated.
On the whole I liked the book and wanted to read it (the middle chapters were especially strong) but every now and then the author wrote with an annoyingly affected style that was very off-putting. I don't know that this is a book that anyone would particularly like or dislike. The parts about environmental impacts were solid but the flow of the book was very poor.
If you're looking for a book about the wine business you should probably go elsewhere. If you're looking for a good book about land use and nimbyism I highly recommend Show Me a Hero (by Lisa Belkin). (Speaking of Show Me a Hero, I watched a few episodes of the HBO miniseries and didn't particularly care for it so don't let that scare you away from the book.)
July 5, 2015
Apparently there is an interesting story somewhere in this book's 360 pages, but I cannot find it. Very disjointed work, but reading it does provide a compelling reason to get drunk on Napa wine. In that regard, bravo.
Read
January 7, 2012There are some things I just didn't want to know about my beloved Napa Valley...
February 23, 2022
More like 3.5. I learned quite a bit about people I actually know or know about, as I live close to Napa and have been visiting and drinking the wines since the early 80's. The book fleshed out the characters and issues and I appreciated that. However, the writing was a bit disjointed and somewhat hard to follow at times. If this is an area and topic that interests you, then I suggest you read it. If you're simply looking for an enjoyable read, then perhaps not.
April 14, 2008
Conaway's writing style is meandering and can be distracting, but for anyone who's ever been to Napa, it's a fascinating look at the big business vs. environment politics of winemaking.
September 28, 2008
See also, Napa: The Story of an American Eden.
February 17, 2009
Unsettling look at the past, present, and future of Napa. True testament to the corruption of the Valley.
June 15, 2013
Far Side of Eden helps the reader understand how Napa farmers became wine royalty. It is informative and fun to read, a must for people who live in the valley.
January 7, 2015
In the late 80s, James Conaway chronicled the rise of America’s most famous wine region in his book “Napa: The Story of an American Eden.” A decade later, he came back to find a Napa Valley with more traffic, more mansions and more glamour. This was in the middle of the “roaring 1990s,” Conaway writes, “with everybody getting rich and a few people willing to consider the consequences.” Vineyards were expanding into the hillsides and Cabernet money was rolling in, but behind the modern winemaking facilities and shiny wine labels, trouble was brewing.
“I also heard on all sides contending views and strongly expressed expectations that each view must prevail,” Conaway wrote in the introduction to his 2002 book “The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land and the Battle for Napa Valley.” “I believe that what happened in Napa Valley is relevant to the rest of the country, however altered now are our interior landscapes.”
The majority of this book focuses on the political and legal wrangling surround the Sierra Club’s lawsuit against Napa County for failing to enforce the California Environmental Quality Act. In the suit, which challenged hillside vineyard expansion, the group also named some individual defendants, including Jayson Pahlmeyer. Conaway constructs two opposing camps: wealthy vintners (led by high rollers like Pahlmeyer and Cakebread) vs. agitating environmentalists (led by the feisty Chris Malan, Peter Mennen and the Sierra Club).
I’ve read lots of responses to this book (considering more than a decade has passed since it was published), and a common complaint is the author’s bias in favor of environmental regulation. The author is sympathetic to environmental protection — shouldn’t we all be? — but Conaway seems concerned more with the health of the land and native species than any of the individual actors in the fight.
I haven’t interviewed the Napa vintners profiled in Conaway’s book, but I’m guessing they may have some problems with the way Conaway portrayed them. “These men were accustomed to getting what they wanted, that was clear,” Conaway writes. “They were determined to find a way around environmental regulation, but there was more: they hated all restrictions placed upon them by county, state, and nation, apparently on philosophical grounds and also because these laws gave people without their means some influence.” When describing Dennis Groth, Conaway writes: “Underlying it all was an ideological resistance to all regulation and a belief in the hallowed right of free enterprise and capital accumulation that benefitted a successful CPA.”
Still, I’m partial to accept Conaway’s premise that when one possesses massive wealth, large amounts of highly-prized vineyard land and unbridled praise from wine media and consumers, one could easily become removed from reality, especially from a healthy relationship with the earth itself. “Unaccustomed to criticism,” Conaway writes, “suddenly they were being condemned by the spiritual heirs of John Muir, and the legitimacy of their way of life was being questioned, and some of them were too angry to discuss this rationally.”
“Winegrowers of Napa Valley, Jack Cakebread’s conservative, deep-pocketed Breakfast Club,” features prominently in the book, which Conaway describes as a “haven for men who did not want to compromise and who believed that their financial gain was synonymous with the general goo.”
“The tendency among its members,” Conaway writes of the group’s reaction to the lawsuit, “was to lump all environmentalists together as part of a conspiracy against wine, when in fact there were myriad differences among environmentalists that became more pronounced each day.”
The author addresses the reader directly in the introduction and epilogue, but in the meat of the book Conaway assumes the narrative perspective of an omniscient, omnipresent eye, swooping through the valley, jumping in and out of minds and moments. I don’t take well to this POV — I find it a bit presumptuous to presume omniscience in the realm of nonfiction. When a nonfiction writer assumes a POV atop a pedestal, I’m tempted to kick that pedestal. The POV also lends itself to some of Conaway’s stranger passages, like: “Jayson Pahlmeyer stepped out onto his patio and turned first to the east and then to the west, his hawklike profile to the wind.”
It’s during Conaway’s analysis of vintners like Dennis Groth, Jack Cakebread and Stu Smith (of Smith-Madrone) that his omniscient point of view becomes most irritating. I love hearing the words of these men themselves, because they speak their minds with clear language, unlike Conaway. But most of the time the reader gets only Conaway’s paraphrasing, not words from the source. Conaway writes for the major actors, not as a reporter who has conducted an interview, but as a remote consciousness that has complete access to his subject’s inner thoughts and feelings. And, given this approach, I can see why some readers react negatively.
Out of all the characters in this piece, I connect most with is Volker Eisele. Conaway clearly spent a lot of time with Eisele, listening and writing down his little witticisms and profound musings.
Unfortunately, this Napa icon recently passed away. I never had the pleasure of meeting Eisele, but I’ve enjoyed his wines and respected his approach to conservation and land use. “One of the first things you learn is that natural processes take time,” writes Conaway, paraphrasing Eisele. “People who don’t live in a natural setting — absentee owners, daytrippers — don’t feel this.”
Conaway continues in his chapter focused on Volker Eisele: “The disconnect between the land and the investments of the owners made it difficult for them to understand the land they owned, or even to talk about it. Yet their radical altering of the landscape would have long-term consequences.”
Elsewhere in the book, Conaway takes this theme and runs with it, getting right to the heart of the chasm between the architects of the American Eden and the ecosystem in which they operate. “One difficulty in the advocacy of good land use,” Conaway writes, “was that the average American had little real experience with nature. To many Americans, the natural world was an abstract notion. Western lands in American were burdened with a history of economic possibility, a tabula rasa upon which one wrote one’s fondest wishes, whether for wealth, status, or solitude, often with little understanding of the place itself. The champions of Manifest Destiny had used the language to fit their needs and ambitions, rendering the notions of wilderness and the natural state undesirable.”
In addition to the details of the legal battle, Conaway occasionally gets caught up with the people he interviews and quotes them, which results in some crumbs of wine wisdom.
Jayson Pahlmeyer has one of the best quotes: “A vine is like a male Homo sapiens. For the first third of his life he’s vigorous, and then as he ages he loses productivity, and in old age he’s slower and wiser.”
I know this book is old, but it still contains a lot of important information about issues that are quite relevant today. Conaway’s book has some flaws, but I respect him for his efforts and learned a lot from his book.
“I also heard on all sides contending views and strongly expressed expectations that each view must prevail,” Conaway wrote in the introduction to his 2002 book “The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land and the Battle for Napa Valley.” “I believe that what happened in Napa Valley is relevant to the rest of the country, however altered now are our interior landscapes.”
The majority of this book focuses on the political and legal wrangling surround the Sierra Club’s lawsuit against Napa County for failing to enforce the California Environmental Quality Act. In the suit, which challenged hillside vineyard expansion, the group also named some individual defendants, including Jayson Pahlmeyer. Conaway constructs two opposing camps: wealthy vintners (led by high rollers like Pahlmeyer and Cakebread) vs. agitating environmentalists (led by the feisty Chris Malan, Peter Mennen and the Sierra Club).
I’ve read lots of responses to this book (considering more than a decade has passed since it was published), and a common complaint is the author’s bias in favor of environmental regulation. The author is sympathetic to environmental protection — shouldn’t we all be? — but Conaway seems concerned more with the health of the land and native species than any of the individual actors in the fight.
I haven’t interviewed the Napa vintners profiled in Conaway’s book, but I’m guessing they may have some problems with the way Conaway portrayed them. “These men were accustomed to getting what they wanted, that was clear,” Conaway writes. “They were determined to find a way around environmental regulation, but there was more: they hated all restrictions placed upon them by county, state, and nation, apparently on philosophical grounds and also because these laws gave people without their means some influence.” When describing Dennis Groth, Conaway writes: “Underlying it all was an ideological resistance to all regulation and a belief in the hallowed right of free enterprise and capital accumulation that benefitted a successful CPA.”
Still, I’m partial to accept Conaway’s premise that when one possesses massive wealth, large amounts of highly-prized vineyard land and unbridled praise from wine media and consumers, one could easily become removed from reality, especially from a healthy relationship with the earth itself. “Unaccustomed to criticism,” Conaway writes, “suddenly they were being condemned by the spiritual heirs of John Muir, and the legitimacy of their way of life was being questioned, and some of them were too angry to discuss this rationally.”
“Winegrowers of Napa Valley, Jack Cakebread’s conservative, deep-pocketed Breakfast Club,” features prominently in the book, which Conaway describes as a “haven for men who did not want to compromise and who believed that their financial gain was synonymous with the general goo.”
“The tendency among its members,” Conaway writes of the group’s reaction to the lawsuit, “was to lump all environmentalists together as part of a conspiracy against wine, when in fact there were myriad differences among environmentalists that became more pronounced each day.”
The author addresses the reader directly in the introduction and epilogue, but in the meat of the book Conaway assumes the narrative perspective of an omniscient, omnipresent eye, swooping through the valley, jumping in and out of minds and moments. I don’t take well to this POV — I find it a bit presumptuous to presume omniscience in the realm of nonfiction. When a nonfiction writer assumes a POV atop a pedestal, I’m tempted to kick that pedestal. The POV also lends itself to some of Conaway’s stranger passages, like: “Jayson Pahlmeyer stepped out onto his patio and turned first to the east and then to the west, his hawklike profile to the wind.”
It’s during Conaway’s analysis of vintners like Dennis Groth, Jack Cakebread and Stu Smith (of Smith-Madrone) that his omniscient point of view becomes most irritating. I love hearing the words of these men themselves, because they speak their minds with clear language, unlike Conaway. But most of the time the reader gets only Conaway’s paraphrasing, not words from the source. Conaway writes for the major actors, not as a reporter who has conducted an interview, but as a remote consciousness that has complete access to his subject’s inner thoughts and feelings. And, given this approach, I can see why some readers react negatively.
Out of all the characters in this piece, I connect most with is Volker Eisele. Conaway clearly spent a lot of time with Eisele, listening and writing down his little witticisms and profound musings.
Unfortunately, this Napa icon recently passed away. I never had the pleasure of meeting Eisele, but I’ve enjoyed his wines and respected his approach to conservation and land use. “One of the first things you learn is that natural processes take time,” writes Conaway, paraphrasing Eisele. “People who don’t live in a natural setting — absentee owners, daytrippers — don’t feel this.”
Conaway continues in his chapter focused on Volker Eisele: “The disconnect between the land and the investments of the owners made it difficult for them to understand the land they owned, or even to talk about it. Yet their radical altering of the landscape would have long-term consequences.”
Elsewhere in the book, Conaway takes this theme and runs with it, getting right to the heart of the chasm between the architects of the American Eden and the ecosystem in which they operate. “One difficulty in the advocacy of good land use,” Conaway writes, “was that the average American had little real experience with nature. To many Americans, the natural world was an abstract notion. Western lands in American were burdened with a history of economic possibility, a tabula rasa upon which one wrote one’s fondest wishes, whether for wealth, status, or solitude, often with little understanding of the place itself. The champions of Manifest Destiny had used the language to fit their needs and ambitions, rendering the notions of wilderness and the natural state undesirable.”
In addition to the details of the legal battle, Conaway occasionally gets caught up with the people he interviews and quotes them, which results in some crumbs of wine wisdom.
Jayson Pahlmeyer has one of the best quotes: “A vine is like a male Homo sapiens. For the first third of his life he’s vigorous, and then as he ages he loses productivity, and in old age he’s slower and wiser.”
I know this book is old, but it still contains a lot of important information about issues that are quite relevant today. Conaway’s book has some flaws, but I respect him for his efforts and learned a lot from his book.
February 11, 2018
If you’re looking a book about winemaking, or even more so, wine enjoyment, this isn’t that book.
HOWEVER, James Conaway’s The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land and the Battle for Napa Valley attempts something more ambitious: To make readable, engrossing literary nonfiction out of what most people think is dry stuff -- local politics, land use controversy, and environmental regulation. Judged on that task, this book is an impressive writing achievement.
It its attention to the human-nature interface, this second Conaway book on Napa Valley recalls John McPhee’s books. Yet Conaway’s sensibility and tone is less decorous and austere than McPhee’s. He’s more willing to talk about the real human nitty-gritty. Money -- who has it and how did they get it? Power -- both formal and informal, including those unwritten rules that no one wants to say out loud. Human motivations -- the high-minded, rational, and altruistic ... but also the personal, egotistic, greedy and petty.
It seems that Conaway drew a wide array of characters fairly from the real-life personalities, and many of these “characters” are almost stranger than fiction -- like the old hippie postmaster whose parrot, Ricki Lake, has free rein in one of the valley’s small-town post offices. While the others aren’t as ostentatiously quirky, Conaway does a good job of showing how each fits into the whole. He resists the temptation to write flat caricatures; even the more difficult, uncompromising individuals are drawn with specificity.
If you are interested in planning, environmental regulation, agriculture, local politics or just in California, this book is illuminating and well executed. It’s also a time-capsule of the first dot-com boom of the late 1990s.
If those aren't your interests, if you just want to read about wine, you may enjoy the last two chapters, 41 and 42, which can function as a lyrical stand-alone set piece about one winery’s harvest and crush. Meanwhile, if you are interested in cultural history, but in Napa’s more lovable, storied past rather than its big-bucks, fractious present -- try Conaway’s first book, Napa: The Story of an American Eden.
HOWEVER, James Conaway’s The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land and the Battle for Napa Valley attempts something more ambitious: To make readable, engrossing literary nonfiction out of what most people think is dry stuff -- local politics, land use controversy, and environmental regulation. Judged on that task, this book is an impressive writing achievement.
It its attention to the human-nature interface, this second Conaway book on Napa Valley recalls John McPhee’s books. Yet Conaway’s sensibility and tone is less decorous and austere than McPhee’s. He’s more willing to talk about the real human nitty-gritty. Money -- who has it and how did they get it? Power -- both formal and informal, including those unwritten rules that no one wants to say out loud. Human motivations -- the high-minded, rational, and altruistic ... but also the personal, egotistic, greedy and petty.
It seems that Conaway drew a wide array of characters fairly from the real-life personalities, and many of these “characters” are almost stranger than fiction -- like the old hippie postmaster whose parrot, Ricki Lake, has free rein in one of the valley’s small-town post offices. While the others aren’t as ostentatiously quirky, Conaway does a good job of showing how each fits into the whole. He resists the temptation to write flat caricatures; even the more difficult, uncompromising individuals are drawn with specificity.
If you are interested in planning, environmental regulation, agriculture, local politics or just in California, this book is illuminating and well executed. It’s also a time-capsule of the first dot-com boom of the late 1990s.
If those aren't your interests, if you just want to read about wine, you may enjoy the last two chapters, 41 and 42, which can function as a lyrical stand-alone set piece about one winery’s harvest and crush. Meanwhile, if you are interested in cultural history, but in Napa’s more lovable, storied past rather than its big-bucks, fractious present -- try Conaway’s first book, Napa: The Story of an American Eden.
August 8, 2017
Better than I thought it would be. If the author has a conceived notion that Napa Valley is at best the mecca for pseudo-elitists, at worst an awful tourist trap - well, I too came to this book armed with that view. I did gain some sympathy for the grape growers and wine producers in the book, whose main point when it comes to land use and sprawl is "Would you rather the valley be covered in vineyards or shitty subdivisions?"
December 8, 2022
Solid 3.5 star read. I enjoyed learning a bit more about the political aspect of the valley. Recognized a lot of names. Was very hard to keep everyone straight though, and all the organizations and what each group was trying to accomplish. Did become a bit cumbersome at times and took longer to read than anticipated.
January 11, 2020
#1 NON-FICTION 20/20 in 2020.
December 24, 2015
Finally finished this mess. I didn't need to know all that. It's pretty obvious that the big boys in Napa are all about profit, just like the big boys everywhere else. Having been to Napa as recently as this past fall, I think it is what it's going to be, which is a mixture of gaudy "castles" and lovely little family-run small establishments. What else is new in America? This book was not put together in a way that made me feel compelled to feel one way or another.
August 5, 2013
as compelling as its predecessor...highly recommended!!!
June 23, 2018
not quite as good as "napa".
May 31, 2016
Very thorough research and history of what went wrong politically in Napa.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews