Publisher: Bloomsbury Press, 2011
Our next Featured Book is Brian Fagan's Elixer: A History of Water and Humankind. Fagan shows that "every human society has been shaped by its relationship to the most basic necessity of life: water" (book jacket). The book spans thousands of years, from ancient Mesopotamia through America's dry southern states today.
Fagan divides this history into what he terms "the three ages of water." The first is the water scarcity of the first several thousand years of human existence, a scarcity which caused the resource to become sacred to most peoples. In the second age, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, water became a commodity, eventually taken for granted. The third age of water is beginning now, and we are again seeing the scarcity of the first age. After taking the reader through these three ages, Fagan ends with a picture of the future and its impending water crisis. According to Fagan, it's time to take action and treat water with "a studied caring and reverence" (347) like our ancestors before us.
What can you do?
- Check it out!
- Visit Brian Fagan's website for reader questions and author interviews
- Learn more about water conservation with other books from Wisconsin's Water Library
Posts
