James Conaway

Biography

James Conaway is the author of three novels, including Nose (Thomas Dunne, 2013), set in California’s wine country. He has written numerous books of nonfiction, including The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land, and the Battle for Napa Valley (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002) and Vanishing America: In Pursuit of Our Elusive Landscapes (Counterpoint, 2007). He is a former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University.

See Work

ESSAYS / Spring 2015

Napa Valley and the Jeffersonian Ideal

By James Conaway ,  Photography by Peter Menzel

Jefferson’s life, writings, and aesthetics inspire in his spiritual descendants, real and feigned, as many contradictions as virtues. This valley may represent the apotheosis of the American family farm, with what is one of the most...