Water - A Biography

Spanning millennia and continents, a revealing history that ?tackles the most important story of our time: our relationship with water in a world of looming scarcity? (Kelly McEvers, NPR Host).

"Far more than a biography of its nominal subject ... The book stands as a compelling history of civilization itself." ?The Wall Street Journal Book Review

Writing with authority and brio, Giulio Boc-caletti?honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Univer-sity of Oxford?shrewdly combines environmental and social history, beginning with the earliest civ-ilizations of sedentary farmers on the banks of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates Rivers. Even as he describes how these societies were made possible by sea-level changes from the last glacial melt, he incisively examines how this type of farming led to irrigation and multiple cropping, which, in turn, led to a population explosion and labor specialization.

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