This was a wonderful book that captured my empathy, my awe and my curiosity. Pearce is a life-long journalist and thus his book is written as a story moreso than a scientific manuscript.

There is true virtue in this. Fred Pearce traveled the world for nearly 30 years to write this book. The secondhand accounts of the people he met, the places he saw and the story that binds it together really captivated me in a way science couldn't.

This is documentary-style with no citations. Pearce did this as to not lessen the effect of his book on the reader. This book is meant to move you emotionally. As books, the little empathy machines they are, can do unrivaled.

I recommend this book to everyone!

Amazingly documented worldwide overview of men-made hydrological problems, and how to solve them.

An exceedingly scary book, much more than what King or Lovecraft or Trump can imagine/do! And the reason why I call it scary is that its happening all around us and the bleak future we have ahead of us. Freshwater, one of the most precious resources we have, had been once treasured dearly and wisely used. But as the pace of industrialisation quickened and the population density rose, short-term gains overtook the long-term ones.

And with them came - DAMS!

Dams were once called the temples of the modern age by Nehru, India's first PM. They were supposed to usher in a post-colonial utopia and instead what we have is displaced homes, destroyed ecosystems, droughts, choking rivers and slow death. Worldwide rush to build more mega-dams like Hoover, Coulee, Three Gorges, Aswan, Narmada etc, and the ill-fated irrigation projects resulting from them have resulted in massive losses of available water coupled with irrational choices of water-demanding crops like cotton or alfalfa, have resulted in the current water crisis we face globally. Some highly tragic cases emerge out of these like the near total destruction of Aral sea and wetlands surrounding it, wanton destruction of Mesopotamian marshlands of around 20,000sq km in area, deforestation of Amazon rainforests, loss of British Fells at an increasing rate, among many others. These join the list of human-made environmental disasters which are threatening us now and lead our next generations on a doomed trajectory.

The solutions to this water crisis have to be political than scientific, for solutions do exist and in many countries water reclamation projects, increasing river flooding basins, taking lessons from ancient projects like wadis, shunning water-hungry crops like cotton in arid areas or nutrient-poor alfalfa, stop building newer dams, improve pipeline integrity should be the way.

This book is a world history on "tragedy of commons" and everyone should read it!

My Rating - 5/5

Reading as part of my Water presentation preparations. A wonderful cornucopia of stories about all sorts of water issues. I read it quite slowly, with lots of follow-up to the topics and issues raised. An excellent introduction to a huge problem.

I learned a great deal from this book about the issues of water resources across the planet. It is hard to fathom that many people struggle to find safe water every day when I have it in abundance here in Mobile, AL. But in many parts of the world water is scarce, and getting more so. It is also a contributing factor to the turmoil in the Middle East and Africa. This is a good book, not only to learn about the environment, but to learn how environmental issues impact us politically and socially as well.

WOW!!!! one of the best books i’ve ever read. Only critique is that it’s a little outdated, would’ve loved to see an update with how the rivers are doing now 15 years after publication. it only seems more prevalent now as climate change intensifies, droughts deepen, once fertile areas salinize, and our rivers die. I now think of water everywhere i go. How much is wasted, how much water intense foods we use, how little we save. I walk on concrete and wonder how we can save the water that sinks in. I shrink away at the prospect of natural gas, hydro stations, EVs, and continuing agriculture as it currently is. I wonder if building highways everywhere is the answer. I don’t know. This book is deeply depressing but offers a glimmer of hope at the end. It bookends beautifully with “Eating to Extinction” and I think these should be read together to see the water (input) and food (output) side of this upcoming crisis. Is water crisis strong enough language? do we need stronger? how do we get people to care? well anyway I LOVE THIS BOOK

This book is a great overview of the history and complex present-day challenges facing many of the world's largest river basins. My complaint is that Pearce did not cite any of his sources nor did he include a notes section at the end of his book, which makes it difficult to evaluate.

This isn't a cheerful book. Pearce offers us a glimpse of a future were millions of people suffer from drought and water shortages. But he does show how a different approach could solve many problems. He challenges the idea of big engineering problems as the solution, and shows how localised projects across the world could solve many of the problems associated with wate - in this sense the book is a hopeful one that does also offer a glimpse of a much better society - where human society is much more in balance with the rhythms and cycles of the natural world, in this case, the very ebb and flow of the rivers, streams and seas.

Full review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/...

When the Rivers Run Dry is a fascinating study of man’s struggle to reign supreme over the world’s water supply by draining aquifers and damming and diverting it to run uphill against gravity, towards corporate money and how governments and corporations through these actions have set into motion a negative chain of events with dire long term consequences to man and society.

This is a collection of vignettes that tell the story of the struggle to control one of our most basic and vital resources -- water. I had no idea of the harmful effects of what we often think of as technological progress -- irrigation and dams. Instead, Pearce concludes, we need to make peace with water as Mother Nature originally planned it.

The author, Fred Pearce, is a journalist who has been traveling around the world and writing about water issues for over twenty years. It definitely shows in the style of this book. In 300+ pages, he takes you on a whirlwind tour around the globe to illustrate the dire situation that the global water supply is in. The case studies that Pearce describes show very vividly how fragile our supply to water is and how devastating our failure to protect it can be. THe chapters are short and centered around illustrating different types of problems, from poisoned wells, dissappearing aquifers, dead rivers and vanishing wetlands to salt encrusted farm land and dangerous dams. It's sobering, to say the least.

This book is definitely not written in an apocalyptic tone, but after the first 100 pages I was terrified. His story about what has happened to the people of Uchsai, on the (former) shore of the Aral Sea was heart breaking without any embellishment. Reading its description, I thought that if any place was hell on earth this was surely it. Fortunately, he also ends the book by talking about examples of what people are doing to possibly stem this crisis. Those chapters were really fascinating. They dealt mostly with decentralized, relatively low-tech solutions and really drove home the realization that, in many cases, hubristic attempts to centrally control water have ended us in deep shit.

One of the things I most appreciated about this book is that Pearce discusses these issues from many angles. I learned about biology, hydrology, political history, economics, social conditions etc., all in a very accessible language.
For example: he discusses water politics between Palestine and Israel, the draining of Lake Chad in Africa, the heartbreak of trying to tame CHina's Yellow river, the decimation of the Colorado, Qaddafi's "manmade river" project, etc... One of my favorite chapters was about the Mekong River in Cambodia. Discussion of water issues in SOuth America is pretty scant. Because he covers so much ground it could get tiring at times for a book of 300+ pages. Ultimately though, it's a book that I learned a lot from and am grateful for reading. Even if you don't plan on reading the whole thing, it's definitely worth picking up and reading the parts that sound most intriguing to you since it does read like a collection of well-researched articles.

I wish everyone I know would read it to get a better understanding of why water is such a crucial issue- how it's elementally tied to power, politics and survival on so many scales (and always has been).
Read it!!! He's not the most stunning writer, but he's a skilled one and his experience and the subject matter make it worth the effort.

An eye opener for any citizen of planet Earth. I’ve learned so much about the importance of water, how modern constructions such as dams, and irrigation practices stop the natural flow of water depleting millions of people of daily water use, turning natural ecosystems that sustain life and economies into wastelands, and also how ancient societies were much better stewards of our waters and left us water systems older than 3,000 years that are still functional today and more efficient than modern engineering at providing water without depleting natural water reserves and destroying rivers and wetlands. Self education is such an important tool in understanding the natural resources of our planet and learning how we as individuals and communities can become better stewards of the natural habitat in which we live and break the pattern of heartless resource consumers. Did you know that it takes the equivalent of 25 bathtubs full of water to grow the cotton for a single t-shirt?