Water

<p><strong>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).&nbsp;<br /><br />"Far more than a biography of its nominal subject &hellip; The book stands as a compelling history of civilization itself." &mdash;<em>The Wall Street Journal Book Review</em></strong><br />&nbsp;<br />Writing with authority and brio, Giulio Boc&shy;caletti&mdash;honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Univer&shy;sity of Oxford&mdash;shrewdly combines environmental and social history, beginning with the earliest civ&shy;ilizations 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.<br />&nbsp;<br />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.<br />&nbsp;<br />Extraordinary for its monumental scope and piercing insightfulness,&nbsp;<em>Water: A Biography&nbsp;</em>richly enlarges our understanding of our relationship to&mdash;and fundamental reliance on&mdash;the most elemental substance on earth.</p>