His research focuses in part on ways water, land, and labor have been organized to produce commodities in arid areas. He wrote a socioeconomic and cultural history, Building the Borderlands, of irrigated cotton agriculture in northeastern Mexico. He has also been increasingly involved in the politics of groundwater management in California, which will be the subject of a second interview. This interview takes a deeper look at his newest book on the cultural, political, and economic dimensions of how mineral springs in Mexico have been used and managed, both in the past and present, and how some of those themes might apply in California.