Water

<b>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). <p/>Far more than a biography of its nominal subject ... The book stands as a compelling history of civilization itself. --<i>The Wall Street Journal Book Review</i></b> <p/> Writing with authority and brio Giulio Boc­caletti--honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment Univer­sity of Oxford--shrewdly combines environmental and social history beginning with the earliest civ­ilizations 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. <p/> We see with clarity how irrigation's structure informed social structure (inventions such as the calendar sprung from agricultural necessity); how in ancient Greece the communal ownership of wells laid the groundwork for democracy; how the Greek and Roman experiences with water security resulted in systems of taxation; and how the modern world as we know it began with a legal framework for the development of water infrastructure. <p/> Extraordinary for its monumental scope and piercing insightfulness <i>Water: A Biography </i>richly enlarges our understanding of our relationship to--and fundamental reliance on--the most elemental substance on earth.