Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams Displaced People and the Environment

A Discover Magazine Top Science Book of the Year. A Northern California Book Award Finalist. There are more than 45000 of them in the world. They have altered the speed of the planets rotation the tilt of its axis and the shape of its gravitational field. They influence landscapes and societies. They are dams and in Deep Water Jacques Leslie offers an incisive searching and beautifully written account of the emerging crisis over dams and the worlds water. Reporting in the tradition of John McPhee and Peter Matthiessen Leslie examines the crisis through the lives of three people: Medha Patkar the worlds foremost anti-dam activist; Thayer Scudder an American anthropologist; and Don Blackmore an Australian water manager. In each of these engrossing portraits Leslie shows how dams seduce national leaders with seeming bounties of water and power but end up producing blights on the citizenry and landscape. Deep Water is an eloquent and important book about the water crisis and a startling look at the fate of our planet.