Water

Today is World Water Day.  World Water Day is an annual UN holiday that explores the importance of fresh water.  World Water Day is celebrated around the world with a variety of events. Find out more at www.worldwaterday.org
Here are 10 books on WATER!

Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis by Cynthia Barnett - Americans see water as abundant and cheap: we turn on the faucet and out it gushes, for less than a penny a gallon. We use more water than any other culture in the world, much to quench what's now our largest crop--the lawn. Yet most Americans cannot name the river or aquifer that flows to our taps, irrigates our food, and produces our electricity. And most don't realize these freshwater sources are in deep trouble.
Blue Revolution exposes the truth about the water crisis--driven not as much by lawn sprinklers as by a tradition that has encouraged everyone, from homeowners to farmers to utilities, to tap more and more. But the book also offers much reason for hope. Award-winning journalist Cynthia Barnett argues that the best solution is also the simplest and least expensive: a water ethic for America. Just as the green movement helped build awareness about energy and sustainability, so a blue movement will reconnect Americans to their water, helping us value and conserve our most life-giving resource. Avoiding past mistakes, living within our water means, and turning to "local water" as we do local foods are all part of this new, blue revolution.
Reporting from across the country and around the globe, Barnett shows how people, businesses, and governments have come together to dramatically reduce water use and reverse the water crisis. Entire metro areas, such as San Antonio, Texas, have halved per capita water use. Singapore's "closed water loop" recycles every drop. New technologies can slash agricultural irrigation in half: businesses can save a lot of water--and a lot of money--with designs as simple as recycling air-conditioning condensate.
The first book to call for a national water ethic, Blue Revolution is also a powerful meditation on water and community in America.

Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World by Seth Siegel - As every day brings urgent reports of growing water shortages around the world, there is no time to lose in the search for solutions. The US government predicts that forty of our fifty states-and sixty percent of the earth's land surface-will soon face alarming gaps between available water and the growing demand for it. Without action, food prices will rise, economic growth will slow, and political instability is likely to follow. Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the US and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst of the coming water calamities. Even with sixty percent of its country a desert, not only doesn't Israel have a water problem; it has an abundance of water. Israel even supplies water to its neighbors-the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Jordan-every day. Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews, Let There Be Water reveals the methods and techniques of the often off-beat inventors who enabled Israel to lead the world in cutting-edge water technology. Let There Be Water also tells unknown stories of how cooperation on water systems can forge diplomatic ties and promote unity. Remarkably, not long ago, now-hostile Iran relied on Israel to manage its water systems, and access to Israel's water know-how helped to warm China's frosty relations with Israel. Every town, every country, and every reader can benefit from learning what Israel did in order to transform itself from a parched land into a water superpower. Beautifully written, Let There Be Water is an inspiring account of vision and sacrifice that will long be admired by government officials and engaged citizens facing water shortages and other seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Ocean Worlds: The Story of Seas on Earth and Other Planets by J. A. Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams - Oceans make up most of the surface of our blue planet. They may form just a sliver on the outside of the Earth, but they are very important, not only in hosting life, including the fish and other animals on which many humans depend, but in terms of their role in the Earth system, in regulating climate, and cycling nutrients. As climate change, pollution, and over-exploitation by humans puts this precious resource at risk, it is more important than ever that we understand and appreciate the nature and history of oceans. There is much we still do not know about the story of the Earth's oceans, and we are only just beginning to find indications of oceans on other planets.

Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity by Sandra Postel - Sandra Postel takes readers around the world to explore water projects that work with, rather than against, nature's rhythms. In New Mexico, forest rehabilitation is safeguarding drinking water; along the Mississippi River, farmers are planting cover crops to reduce polluted runoff; and in China, "sponge cities" are capturing rainwater to curb urban flooding. Efforts like these will be essential as climate change disrupts both weather patterns and the models on which we base our infrastructure. We will be forced to adapt. The question is whether we will continue to fight the water cycle or recognize our place in it and take advantage of the inherent services nature offers. Water, Postel writes, is a gift, the source of life itself. How will we use this greatest of gifts?

The Source: How River Made America and America Remade Its Rivers by Martin Doyle - America has more than 250,000 rivers, coursing over more than 3 million miles, connecting the disparate regions of the United States. On a map they can look like the veins, arteries, and capillaries of a continent-wide circulatory system, and in a way they are. Over the course of this nation's history rivers have served as integral trade routes, borders, passageways, sewers, and sinks. Over the years, based on our shifting needs and values, we have harnessed their power with waterwheels and dams, straightened them for ships, drained them with irrigation canals, set them on fire, and even attempted to restore them.In this fresh and powerful work of environmental history, Martin Doyle tells the epic story of America and its rivers, from the U.S. Constitution's roots in interstate river navigation, the origins of the Army Corps of Engineers, the discovery of gold in 1848, and the construction of the Hoover Dam and the TVA during the New Deal, to the failure of the levees in Hurricane Katrina and the water wars in the west. Along the way, he explores how rivers have often been the source of arguments at the heart of the American experiment--over federalism, sovereignty and property rights, taxation, regulation, conservation, and development.Through his encounters with experts all over the country--a Mississippi River tugboat captain, an Erie Canal lock operator, a dendrochronologist who can predict the future based on the story trees tell about the past, a western rancher fighting for water rights--Doyle reveals the central role rivers have played in American history--and how vital they are to its future.

Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World by Scott Harrison - At 28 years old, Scott Harrison had it all. A top nightclub promoter in New York City, his life was an endless cycle of drugs, booze, and models. But 10 years in, desperately unhappy and morally bankrupt, he asked himself, "What would the exact opposite of my life look like?" Walking away from everything, Harrison spent the next 16 months on a hospital ship in West Africa and discovered his true calling. In 2006, with no money and less than no experience, Harrison founded charity: water. Today, his organization has raised over $300 million to bring clean drinking water to more than 8.2 million people around the globe. Now Harrison recounts the twists and turns that built charity: water into one of the most trusted and admired nonprofits in the world. Renowned for its 100% donation model, bold storytelling, imaginative branding, and radical commitment to transparency, charity: water has disrupted how social entrepreneurs work while inspiring millions of people to join its mission of bringing clean water to everyone on the planet within our lifetime. Harrison outlines how to build a better charity, a better business, and a better life -- proving it's never too late to make a change.

Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean by Jonathan White - In Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, writer, sailor, and surfer Jonathan White takes readers across the globe to discover the science and spirit of ocean tides. In the Arctic, White shimmies under the ice with an Inuit elder to hunt for mussels in the dark cavities left behind at low tide; in China, he races the Silver Dragon, a twenty-five-foot tidal bore that crashes eighty miles up the Qiantang River; in France, he interviews the monks that live in the tide-wrapped monastery of Mont Saint-Michel; in Chile and Scotland, he investigates the growth of tidal power generation; and in Panama and Venice, he delves into how the threat of sea level rise is changing human culturethe very old and very new. Tides combines lyrical prose, colorful adventure travel, and provocative scientific inquiry into the elemental, mysterious paradox that keeps our planets waters in constant motion. Photographs, scientific figures, line drawings, and sixteen color photos dramatically illustrate this engaging, expert tour of the tides.

The Water-Wise Home: How to Conserve, Capture, and Reuse Water in Your Home and Landscape by Laura Allen - Save the earth's most precious resource while also saving yourself money. Laura Allen provides expert strategies for using water smartly and efficiently while fulfilling all of your home and garden needs. Learn how to create a water-wise landscape, reuse greywater, harvest rainwater, and even set up a waterless composting toilet. Offering proven techniques in clear and accessible language, The Water-Wise Home makes it easy to help the environment and lower your household operating costs through conserving water.

Water: Exploring the Blue Planet by Markus Eisl, Gerald Mansberger, & Paul Schreilechner - Water is in crisis. We are in crisis. All life depends on water and we are running out of it, but where exactly is the water and where is it going? This book provides new insight into the world of water and contributes to a wider understanding of the current predicament.
Water: Exploring the Blue Planet is essentially a map of water. It features astonishingly detailed photographs that reveal the watery health of the Blue Planet. Readers are taken aboard satellites circling the Earth from where the most technologically advanced cameras and remote sensors capture what lies below. The photographs are accompanied by descriptions and organized in thematic chapters.
Water reveals the damage wrought by nature -- cyclones, volcanoes, floods -- and the destruction wrought by humans -- vanishing reservoirs, receding glaciers, melting ice sheets. And what of our attempts to control water? How do the hydropower dams, shore stabilization structures and desert oases we build affect the movement and availability of water? How does our insatiable thirst and recklessness cause poisonous salination, desertification and the disappearance of seas, lakes, reservoirs, islands and shorelines?
In the text and captions, the expert authors explain current knowledge of life's essential element, from the biodiversity of the oceans to the inestimable value of drinking water. Readers can follow the tracings of Earth's most important resource as it travels around the globe, and acquire a new and deeper understanding of the water crisis. They will also marvel at the utter beauty of Earth.

What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City by Mona Hanna-Attisha - The dramatic story of the signature environmental disaster of our time and an inspiring tale of scientific resistance by a relentless physician who stood up to power. Flint was already a troubled city in 2014 when the state of Michigan--in the name of austerity--shifted the source of its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Soon after, citizens began complaining about the water that flowed from their taps--but officials rebuffed them, insisting that the water was fine. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician at the city's public hospital, took state officials at their word and encouraged the parents and children in her care to continue drinking the water--after all, it was American tap water, blessed with the state's seal of approval. But a conversation at a cookout with an old friend, leaked documents from a rogue environmental inspector, and the activism of a concerned mother raised red flags about lead--a neurotoxin whose irreversible effects fall most heavily on children. Even as circumstantial evidence mounted and protests grew, Dr. Mona knew that the only thing that could stop the lead poisoning was undeniable proof--and that to get it, she'd have to enter the fight of her life. What the Eyes Don't See is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona--accompanied by an idiosyncratic team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders--proved that Flint's kids were exposed to lead and then fought her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, this book shows how misguided austerity policies, the withdrawal of democratic government, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself--an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family's activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice. What the Eyes Don't See is a riveting, beautifully rendered account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their--and all of our--children.