Water The epic struggle for wealth, power, and civilization

Steven Solomon

Book - 2010

"A narrative account of how water has shaped human society from the ancient past to the present"--Provided by publisher.

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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Harper 2010.
Language
English
Main Author
Steven Solomon (-)
Edition
1st ed
Physical Description
x, 596 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical reference (p. [501]-564) and index.
ISBN
9780060548308
  • List of Maps
  • Prologue
  • Part 1. Water in Ancient History
  • 1. The Indispensable Resource
  • 2. Water and the Start of Civilization
  • 3. Rivers, Irrigation, and the Earliest Empires
  • 4. Seafaring, Trade, and the Making of the Mediterranean World
  • 5. The Grand Canal and the Flourishing of Chinese Civilization
  • 6. Islam, Deserts, and the Destiny of History's Most Water-Fragile Civilization
  • Part 2. Water and the Ascendancy of the West
  • 7. Waterwheel, Plow, Cargo Ship, and the Awakening of Europe
  • 8. The Voyages of Discovery and the Launch of the Oceanic Era
  • 9. Steam Power, Industry, and the Age of the British Empire
  • Part 3. Water and the Making of the Modern Industrial Society
  • 10. The Sanitary Revolution
  • 11. Water Frontiers and the Emergence of the United States
  • 12. The Canal to America's Century
  • 13. Giant Dams, Water Abundance, and the Rise of Global Society
  • Part 4. The Age of Scarcity
  • 14. Water: The New Oil
  • 15. Thicker Than Blood: The Water-Famished Middle East
  • 16. From Have to Have-Not: Mounting Water Distress in Asia's Rising Giants
  • 17. Opportunity from Scarcity: The New Politics of Water in the Industrial Democracies
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Select Bibliography
  • Photograph Credits
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Is Water a commodity history? The book's ambitious subtitle fits that genre. How did earlier commodity historians, content with Mark Kurlansky's Cod (CH, Dec'97, 35-2109) and Giles Milton's Nathaniel's Nutmeg (1999) overlook this fundamental human need? Solomon is a journalist who writes with nonacademic clarity. Even in a book of more than 500 pages, he has to be selective, but the indispensable topics are here. Chapters include "The Grand Canal and the Flourishing of Chinese Civilization," "Waterwheel, Plow, Cargo Ship, and the Awakening of Europe," "The Sanitary Revolution," and "Water as the New Oil." Especially for recent history, Solomon can be insightful. For instance, he points out that water helps explain Chinese insistence on controlling Tibet. Although anybody can learn a good deal from Solomon, uneven research weakens his book. For instance, the author writes a chapter on US canals, but his bibliography does not include the standard history by Ronald E. Shaw, Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States, 1790-1860 (CH, Sep'91, 29-0533). What is worse, Solomon omitted the work edited by the Norwegian scholar Terje Tvedt and others, the four-volume (so far) A History of Water (2005-). Summing Up: Recommended. General and undergraduate collections. D. M. Fahey Miami University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Solomon's unprecedented, all-encompassing, and resounding inquiry into the science and politics of water is predicated on two incontrovertible yet disregarded facts: water is essential to life and civilization. After elucidating water's defining role in the planet's climate and quantifying the earth's limited supply of freshwater, Solomon describes in vivid detail the water technologies of the ancient river societies of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Assyria. On to Rome and its world-altering aqueducts and advanced sanitation, a crucial subject covered in depth when Solomon turns to nineteenth-century London, after telling the fascinating story of China's bold and transforming waterworks. By the time Solomon reaches America and its water-powered industrialization, it becomes clear that the technological marvels of one era deliver the environmental challenges of the next. The triumphs of water harnessed, therefore, give way to accounts of water polluted and squandered. Solomon shares sobering revelations about the harsh disparities between the lives of those who have water and those who don't, reports on the cruel consequences of today's water scarcities, and assesses the potential for a nightmarish impending freshwater famine. Seeking to inspire us to place a higher value on water and establish wiser approaches to its use, Solomon has created a brilliantly discursive and compelling epic of humankind and earth's most vital and precious resource.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2009 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This sprawling text reconstructs the history of civilization in order to illuminate the importance of water in human development from the first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and the Indus River Valley to the present. Solomon (The Confidence Game) advances a persuasive argument: the prosperity of nations and empires has depended on their access to water and their ability to harness water resources. The story he tells is familiar, but his emphasis on water is unique: he shows how the Nile's flood patterns determined political unity and dynastic collapses in Egypt. He suggests that the construction of China's Grand Canal made possible a sixth-century reunification that eluded the Roman Empire. Finally, he attributes America's rise to superpower status to such 20th-century water innovations as the Panama Canal and Hoover Dam. Solomon surveys the current state of the world's water resources by region, making a compelling case that the U.S. and other leading democracies have untapped strategic advantages that will only become more significant as water becomes scarcer. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Occasionally murky, slow-flowing study of the role of water in the makingand perhaps undoingof civilization. Journalist Solomon (The Confidence Game: How Unelected Central Bankers Are Governing the Changed World Economy, 1995) takes a step from short-form reportage into big-picture history, with mixed results. His overall thesis is unexceptionable: Humans have a heavy ecological footprint, and it's getting heavier and less localized as we begin to search more intensively for water as the planet begins to dry up. The wars of the future are likely to be about the control of water, foremost among other resources, and places relatively rich and poor in the substance will come increasingly into conflict. The industrialized nations of the West, though currently embattled, enjoy "relatively modest population pressures and generally moist, temperate environments," which put the former first world at advantage in the new world to come. In the long course of his sweeping history, Solomon often loses the trail; too much of the historical material is padding, disconnected from larger themes. For example, the author includes digressive narratives concerning long sea voyages, which he reels in by remarking that explorers had to find a freshwater source soon after landfall, the development of the "improved cask" notwithstanding. More germane is Solomon's long view of the future, in which he sees opportunity "for the Western-led market democracies to relaunch their global leadership," even if, as he also notes, those countries are most given to squandering water. He identifies plenty of obstacles to an equitable future, both institutional and geophysical, but remains optimistic that science-born solutions are in the offing. Though too long and not always to the point, a somewhat useful piece for readers interested in natural resources and the geopolitics attendant to them. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.