The Ripple Effect : The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century
New York : Scribner Ltd : 2011 Description: 30cm : 448 PagesContent type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volume001: 42130ISBN: 9781416535454Subject(s): Environment | Water | Fresh WaterDDC classification: 363.7 PRUItem type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 363.7 PRU (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 111954 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
AS ALEX PRUD'HOMME and his great-aunt Julia Child were completing their collaboration on her memoir, My Life in France , they began to talk about the French obsession with bottled water, which had finally spread to America. From this spark of interest, Prud'homme began what would become an ambitious quest to understand the evolving story of freshwater. What he found was shocking: as the climate warms and world population grows, demand for water has surged, but supplies of freshwater are static or dropping, and new threats to water quality appear every day. The Ripple Effect is Prud'homme's vivid and engaging inquiry into the fate of freshwater in the twenty-first century.
The questions he sought to answer were urgent: Will there be enough water to satisfy demand? What are the threats to its quality? What is the state of our water infrastructure--both the pipes that bring us freshwater and the levees that keep it out? How secure is our water supply from natural disasters and terrorist attacks? Can we create new sources for our water supply through scientific innovation? Is water a right like air or a commodity like oil--and who should control the tap? Will the wars of the twenty-first century be fought over water?
Like Daniel Yergin's classic The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power , Prud'homme's The Ripple Effect is a masterwork of investigation and dramatic narrative. With striking instincts for a revelatory story, Prud'homme introduces readers to an array of colorful, obsessive, brilliant--and sometimes shadowy--characters through whom these issues come alive. Prud'homme traversed the country, and he takes readers into the heart of the daily dramas that will determine the future of this essential resource--from the alleged murder of a water scientist in a New Jersey purification plant, to the epic confrontation between salmon fishermen and copper miners in Alaska, to the poisoning of Wisconsin wells, to the epidemic of intersex fish in the Chesapeake Bay, to the wars over fracking for natural gas. Michael Pollan has changed the way we think about the food we eat; Alex Prud'homme will change the way we think about the water we drink. Informative and provocative, The Ripple Effect is a major achievement.
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Library Journal Review
What does water mean to individuals, to daily life, to a society? We frequently take its availability for granted. This complacency is what provoked Prud'homme (The Cell Game) to write this book. With his acute journalist's instincts, he investigates numerous issues surrounding water, including its quality, availability, ownership, and infrastructure in both the United States and the rest of the world. In this high-stakes story, bolstered by extensive research and in-depth interviews with experts, Prud'homme guides readers on an "intellectual adventure" to better understand why water is "the most valuable resource on earth," and, more important, he demonstrates why water is "the resource that will define this century." VERDICT Highly recommended for readers of nature and political science books.-Norah Xiao, Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
Prud'homme, a journalist and the coauthor with Julia Child of My Life in France, examines crucial issues concerning the world's finite supply of fresh water-pollution, water quantity (drought and flood), waste, and governance. Focusing on the U.S., he explores how water scarcity, population growth, and environmental degradation are forcing the country to a moment of reckoning on a scale not seen since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. And he notes how woefully obsolete laws designed to protect drinking supplies in the 1970s are becoming, when hundreds of untested new chemicals enter U.S. waterways every year, and the majority of water pollution now comes from unregulated storm-water runoff, where insecticides, fertilizers, paint, and motor oil are washed into the water supply. Prud'homme offers ample and eloquent warnings of a looming water crisis: intersex fish in Chesapeake Bay, the poisoning of water wells in Wisconsin from agricultural runoff, Lake Mead's record-low waterline in Nevada, decaying dams and levees. Prud'homme's eloquence and local focus will help this book rise to the top of the recent flood of water-themed books including Elixir by Brian Fagan and The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.CHOICE Review
Freshwater in the 21st century looks polluted and overdrawn. It is going to be a very dry future. Not that water is a dry topic, especially when this book begins with an account of a dead body found at a water treatment plant. Writer/journalist Prud'homme presents case after case involving both corporate and individual abuse in the midst of government mismanagement, and discusses each case in the context of global warming. The brightest spots on the horizon are the new technologies being developed to address some of the pollution issues presented, for example the use of microorganisms in remediation efforts. The author explains complex topics very well. However, the book is not particularly scholarly; most citations are from Web sites or news sources, and sensationalism is too often the tone invoked. For example, living in Phoenix will be like "... a dress rehearsal of life on Mars...." This is reminiscent of what S. Lichter and S. Rothman wrote about in Environmental Cancer (1999). Also, suggesting that wealthy societies pollute more ignores Kuznets curve and the role of free trade in the fight against climate change, according to the WTO at the UN. Nonetheless, a timely book on an important topic. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and academic students, all levels. T. Johnson Prescott Valley Public LibraryBooklist Review
As development spreads and water resources are stretched to the limit, one essential resource, water, is becoming increasingly commodified and the subject of corporate interest and investment as well as lawsuits when consumers weigh in with their concerns. How did we get to such a place, and what does the future hold for water quality and supply in the U.S. and around the world? Prud'homme examines the everyday products whose use affects the quality and the supply of water, including fertilizers, antibacterial soap, and prescription drugs containing chemicals that later find their ways into water and sewage treatment systems to the detriment of the ecosystem. Prud'homme takes as a starting point the mysterious death in 2005 of a hydrochemist killed while taking water samples in Passaic, New Jersey, a hotbed for controversies over water. Proceeding from it, he offers historical and current perspectives on incidents ranging from th. black mayonnais. of sludge found in New York neighborhoods to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico BP oil rig blowout. An important book on a fundamental resource.--Bush, Vaness. Copyright 2010 BooklistKirkus Book Review
Freelance journalist Prud'homme (The Cell Game: Sam Waksal's Fast Money and False Promisesand the Fate of ImClone's Cancer Drug, 2004, etc.) offers acomprehensive, even encyclopedic, survey ofthe dangers, debates, frustrations, failures, technology, greed, apathy and rage that whirlpool around the phenomenally complex issue of freshwater.The author conducted interviews with principals on all sides of the issueconsumers, entrepreneurs, politicians, business executives, bureaucrats, the rich and the thirstyand visited key sites, and he provides a generally balanced view of the looming freshwater crisis. He educates us about the depletion of aquifers, the role of big business in the race for water (billions of dollars at stake), the demands that power generation (coal, nuclear) place on water resources, the effects of agricultural runoff on rivers, oceans and marine life, the process of wastewater treatment, global warming, the difference between "gray water" and "black water," the fragility of cities (due to water demand) as geographically distant as New York City and Los Angeles, the mining industry's passion for some prime Alaska real estate, droughts and floods, dams and salmon, desalination, shrinking reservoirs and our human determination to keep doing what we're doing until it's too late to save ourselves. Prud'homme lauds the Dutch for looking ahead and protecting their land (at enormous expense), and the Singaporeans for their stewardship; praises Intel for recycling much of the water used in computer-chip fabrication; blasts the bottled-water industry, reminding us that about half of the products available are mere tap waterand they generate all those throwaway bottles that most people don't bother to recycle. And what would a story about liquid gold be without a walk-on by T. Boone Pickens? Hopefully, the author's commonsensical solutions will be heeded.As essential work about a topic too-often ignored.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.There are no comments on this title.