Whet your Appetite with these 45+ Books on Water

For some reason, I have a lot of books about water on my shelves. But my collection, seems like a drop in the ocean (forgive me) compared to all of the great books on water that are out there.  I love the number of different ways that people write about water – from broad historical overviews to sharp-eyed analyses of current water resource challenges or lyrical explorations of the waters of a region. Often a single book will examine the topic from more than perspective, revealing how integral and integrated water is with past, present, and future and both natural ecosystems and human societies.

I’ve attempted to take an inventory of the water books for the popular press, published in English over the past two decades or so, divided into very rough categories.  I’m sharing the list with my Watershed Hydrology students in the hopes that they explore the ways that the technical topics we cover in class have broader connections. But having compiled the list, I thought I’d put it here in case you are looking for a good book to read, in which case…dive in.

1. Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis by Cynthia Barnett*
2. Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind by Brian Fagan*
3. Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman
4. Your Water Footprint: The Shocking Facts about How Much Water We Use to Make Everyday Products by Stephen Leahy
5. Water: A Natural History by Alice Outwater
6. Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity by Sandra Postel
7. The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century by Alex Prud’homme
8. Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World’s Most Vital Resource by David Sedlak*
9. Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization by Steven Solomon
10. see also all other headings

1. Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water by Maude Barlow
2. Whose Water is It? The Unquenchable Thirst of a Water-hungry World by  Bernadette McDonald and Douglas Jehl
3. Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst by Diane Raines Ward
4. Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit by Vandana Shiva
5. Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World by Seth Siegel

1. Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett*

1. Still Waters: the Secret World of Lakes by Curt Stager
2. Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Waters of the Eastern US by Cynthia Barnett
3. See also the Laurentian Great Lakes

1. The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade it’s Rivers by Martin Doyle*
2. When the Rivers Run Dry: Water – the Defining Crisis of the 21st Century by Fred Pearce
3. See also The American West and Terrible Floods

1. Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters by Robert Glennon*

1. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke
2. The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna Clark
3. Drinking Water: A History by James Salzman

1. Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods by John Elliot Allen, Marjorie Burns, and Scott Burns
2. Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko*
3. Water is For Fighting Over: and Other Myths about Water in the West by John Fleck*
4. A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia by Blaine Harden
5. The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow by B. Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam*
6. Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles Water Supply and the Owens Valley by William Kahrl*
7. Sustainable Water: Challenges and Solutions from California by Allison Lassiter
8. River of Renewal: Myth and History in the Klamath Basin by Stephen Most
9. Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River by David Owen
10. Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West by James Powell
11. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner*
12. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West by Donald Worster

1. The Great Lakes Water Wars by Peter Annin*
2. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan*
3. The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis
4. Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World by Nancy Langston

1. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John Barry*
2. The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough*

1. Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb
2. King of Fish: The Thousand Year Run of Salmon by David Montgomery
3. KIngs of the Yukon: One Summer Paddling Across the Far North by Adam Weymouth

1. The Water Book: The Extraordinary Story of Our Most Ordinary Substance by Alok Jha*

*On Anne’s bookshelves.