Nominated for the Winship/PEN New England Award
In "Water: A Natural History, " Alice Outwater takes us on a journey
that begins 500 years ago, back to the wardrobe records of the kings of
France and the diaries of the first Western explorers, to recover a lost
knowledge -- how the land cleans its water. "Water" moves from the
reservoir to the toilet, from the grasslands of the Midwest to the
Everglades of Florida, through the guts of a wastewater treatment plant
and out to the waterways again. Step by step, we come to learn what
should have been done from the beginning: A complex ecological system
long kept American water remarkably clean but as we have randomly
removed necessary components from it, we have simplified the system to
the point where it can no longer do its job. While engineering can
depollute water, only these ecologically interacting systems can create
healthy waterways. "Water" is the unforgettable story of the symbiosis
that existed between the country's water, the land from which it springs
and the life the two support together. It is a story that none of us who
hope to live on this planet can afford to miss.