100 Best Water Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best water books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
Science fiction’s supreme masterpiece, "Dune" will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, it is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who will become the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib. Paul’s noble family is named stewards of Arrakis, whose sands are the only source of a powerful drug called “the spice.” After his family is brought... more
Jeff BezosI’m a big science-fiction fan. I love [this book]. (Source)
Adam SavageIf you haven't read it, just go read it. It is amazing! (Source)
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark.
But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes... more
Reese WitherspoonGreat article about the success of Where the Crawdads Sing. Did you read the book? @ReesesBookClub 🤗 https://t.co/w1ZgQLRzsx (Source)
Kris Crocker@spokanelibrary I love this book!! (Source)
Thirst quencher
Kid drencher
Cloud fluffer
Fire snuffer
Find out about the many roles water plays in this poetic exploration of water throughout the year. less
Whirl. Swirl. Watch it curl by. Steam is steam unless...it cools high.
This spare, poetic picture book follows a group of kids as they move through all the different phases of the water cycle. From rain to fog to snow to mist, talented author Miranda Paul and the always remarkable Jason Chin (Redwoods, Coral Reefs, Island, Gravity) combine to create a beautiful and informative journey in this innovative nonfiction picture book that will leave you thirsty for more. less
With its wide sky and warm earth, Princess Gie Gie’s kingdom is a beautiful land. But clean drinking water is scarce in her small African village. And try as she might, Gie Gie cannot bring the water closer; she cannot make it run clearer. Every morning, she rises before the sun to make the long journey to the well. Instead of a crown, she wears a heavy pot on her head to collect the water. After the voyage home, after boiling the water to drink and... more
Named as one of the Top 50 Sustainability Books by University of Cambridges Programme for Sustainability Leadership and Greenleaf Publishing. less
Gaia VinceHe is someone who goes to the source – no pun intended! – of the stories that he talks about. Proper on-the-ground reportage (Source)
Jack DorseyI keep coming back to it. I love the straightforwardness, the tightness, and the poetry. I think it shows a common struggle that is repeated over and over in so many narratives both fictional and nonfictional. (Source)
Jordan B PetersonThe Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway https://t.co/7dJE4Pfn56, a book from my great books list https://t.co/AxBNX3QpMb (Source)
May WitwitI taught this book to my students in Iraq during the economic sanctions. And I feel like it gave me some kind of strength to continue. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the world’s freshwater, and they provide food, work, and weekend fun for tens of millions of Americans. Yet they are under threat as never before.
In a work of narrative reporting in the vein of Rachel Carson and Elizabeth Kolbert, prize-winning reporter Dan Egan delivers an eye-opening portrait of our nation’s greatest natural resource as it faces ecological calamity. He tells the story of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Chicago ship canal—good ideas in their... more
In Water, esteemed journalist Steven Solomon describes a terrifying—and all too... more
This book has the potential to profoundly transform your world view. Using high-speed photography, Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words... more
Hey, water! I know you! You're all around.
Join a young girl as she explores her surroundings and sees that water is everywhere. But water doesn't always look the same, it doesn't always feel the same, and it shows up in lots of different shapes. Water can be a lake, it can be steam, it can be a tear, or it can even be a snowman.
As the girl discovers water in nature, in weather, in her home, and even inside her own body, water comes to... more
Regarded as a Great American Novel, "Moby Dick" is the ultimate tale of seeking vengeance.
Narrated by the crew member Ishmael, this epic whaling adventure follows the crew of the "Pequod," as its captain, Ahab, descends deeper and deeper into madness on his quest to find and kill the white whale that maimed him. Beyond the surface--of ship life, whaling, and the hunt for the elusive Moby Dick--are allegorical references to life--and even the universe--in this masterpiece by Herman Melville.
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Steve JobsJobs told me that "Moby-Dick" was among his favorite books and he reread it a lot when he was a teen. (Source)
Barack ObamaAccording to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, this title is among his most influential forever favorites. (Source)
Rebecca GoldsteinI actually have quite an idiosyncratic reading of this great metaphysical masterpiece. (Source)
As every day brings urgent reports of growing water shortages around the world, there is no time to lose in the search for solutions.
The U.S. government predicts that forty of our fifty states—and 60 percent of the earth's land surface—will soon face alarming gaps between available water and the growing demand for it. Without action, food prices will rise, economic growth will slow, and political instability is likely to follow.
Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the United States and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst...
moreDon't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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The Colorado River is a crucial resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado's headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico... more
This is a heartfelt, beautifully written book about the land and the people who have worked it--from gold miners to wheat ranchers to small fruit farmers and today's Big Ag.... more
"Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition" is the best-selling, award-winning guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement life-enhancing water-, sun-, wind-, and shade-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community. This book enables you to assess your on-site resources, gives you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empowers you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional plan specific to your site and needs.
Clearly written with... more
Raindrops drop. They plop. They patter. They spatter. And in the process, they make the whole world feel fresh and new and clean.
In this gorgeously photo-illustrated nonfiction picture book, celebrated author April Pulley Sayre sheds new light on the wonders of rain, from the beauty of a raindrop balanced on a leaf to the amazing, never-ending water cycle that keeps our planet... more
Asher Wolf@trib I love that book. So much. (Source)
Zoe KeatingFor a while in 2015 I lost the ability to read (PTSD, I’m told) and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” and Eli Brown’s “Cinnamon & Gunpowder” were the first books I was able to understand and enjoy. @neilhimself’s book in particular was like a hand pulling me up. https://t.co/foEbRxYbuj (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
In the first and only title to win both the prestigious Kate Greenaway and Caldecott Medal, and by the illustrator of the bestselling I Want My Hat Back and Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, a tiny fish proudly wears a blue top hat. It fits him perfectly. Problem is, trouble could be following close behind... So it's a good thing that the enormous fish he took it from won't wake up. And even if he does, it's not as though he'll ever know... more
Elys DolanLow-key but subversively funny adventure involving a fish and a stolen hat. (Source)
When the people of Flint, Michigan, turned on their faucets in April 2014, the water pouring out was poisoned with lead and other toxins. Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint—a... more
Watch the days and seasons pass as the wind blows, the fog rolls in, and icebergs drift by. Outside, there is water all around. Inside, the daily life of a lighthouse keeper and his family unfolds as the keeper boils water for tea, lights the lamp's wick, and writes every detail in his logbook. less
Sandra Postel takes readers around the world to explore water projects that work with,... more
Steven PinkerReplenish by Sandra Postel: New & interesting book on water management & conservation #earthoptimism #ecomodernism. https://t.co/orpoi74ldk (Source)
Walter IsaacsonRead [this book]. (Source)
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
Michael VossI enjoy nearly everything Mark Twain ever wrote, but my favorite is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This novel showcases Twain at the top of his game in terms of acerbic wit, sharp societal observations and the use of regional dialects - for which he initially garnered great criticism, before the passage of time enabled critics to understand and acknowledge its authenticity. (Source)
In Water Wars, Shiva uses her remarkable knowledge of... more
He visits Norwegian megafarms that use genetic techniques once pioneered on sheep to grow millions of pounds of salmon a year. He travels to the ancestral river of the Yupik Eskimos to see the only Fair Trade–certified fishing company in the world. He makes clear how PCBs and mercury find their way into... more
Barry EstabrookThis book is totally unbiased and very serious at looking for solutions to the global fisheries problem. He picks four iconic fish to use as examples to serve for the whole spectrum. So there is tuna, salmon, cod and sea bass. He doesn’t condemn fish farming outright but he explores ways to do it so that we continue to fish in what is the last wild place where we get our food. (Source)
Helen ScalesGreenberg brings Roberts’s story bang up to date. He answers questions about what we eat today and how that is affecting the ocean. He picks four fish, which in the western world at least are the main species we eat. Those are tuna, salmon, cod and sea bass. It is a fascinating story about how we got hooked on those four species, which he tells from his perspective as an avid angler. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
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- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book 2008 less
Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day's journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years... more
Told from both Emma and Galen's points of view, here is a fish-out-of-water story that sparkles with intrigue, humor, and waves of romance. less
Here, in the early 1800s, according to history, an Indian girl spent eighteen years alone, and this beautifully written novel is her story. It is a romantic adventure filled with drama and heartache, for not only was mere subsistence on so desolate a spot a near miracle, but Karana had to contend with the ferocious pack of wild dogs that had killed her younger brother,... more
A bright, science-minded boy goes to the beach equipped to collect and examine flotsam--anything floating that has been washed ashore. Bottles, lost toys, small objects of every description are among his usual finds. But there's no way he could have prepared for one particular discovery: a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera, with its own secrets to share . . . and to keep.
Each of David Wiesner's amazing picture books has revealed the magical possibilities of some ordinary thing or happening--a frog on a lily pad, a trip to... more
Seth MnookinThe Ghost Map is a book that I oftentimes give to people to show them how cool and exciting and accessible and gripping stories about scientific discoveries can be. (Source)
Alison AlvarezI read the Ghost Map, a book about 1854 London Cholera outbreak. The outbreak was stopped because of a map created by Dr. John Snow. You can see hints of this map in some of our customer discovery tools because it was such an effective way of pinpointing a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. (Source)
Stephen EvansJohnson looks at London during a specific moment in time, August 1854, and focuses on a particular incident, an outbreak of cholera in Soho, in Central London. (Source)
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
Barack ObamaDuring a trip to a public library in Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood in 2015, Obama shared some of his childhood favorites with a group of young students. He also read (and acted out) Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak to kids at the White House in 2014. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald Where the Wild... (Source)
Michael MorpurgoThis is the first book that I ever read on my own and I take great pleasure and pride in that. It was the first book where I really identified strongly with the boy Jim in it. He was about the same age as I was when I began reading it. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Jabari is definitely ready to jump off the diving board. He's finished his swimming lessons and passed his swim test, and he's a great jumper, so he's not scared at all. "Looks easy," says Jabari, watching the other kids take their turns. But when his dad squeezes his hand, Jabari squeezes back. He needs to figure out what kind of special jump to do anyway, and he should probably do some stretches before climbing up onto the diving board. more
So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even... more
Oprah WinfreyThe only thing more thrilling than being captivated by a book is being able to share it with others. Which is why I’m excited to bring @oprahsbookclub to @apple starting TODAY! My first pick, The Water Dancer by the brilliant Ta-Nehisi Coates. It will enthrall you. #ReadwithUs https://t.co/DG99kTKrWu (Source)
John RamptonOprah on Ta-Nehisi Coates' sci-fi debut: 'One of the best books I've ever read' https://t.co/S4r62JQOFe https://t.co/Nmd8PU7yYN (Source)
Rick Klau@goodreads @taffyakner @thrillkinson @itsDanielSuarez @blakecrouch1 @eliotpeper @RonanFarrow @cbracy The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehesi Coates. Coates sees us—all of us—with a clarity that is as unnerving as it is breathtaking. He sees our failures, our aspirations, our hypocrisy, our pettiness, our beauty. Astounding book. https://t.co/afUvOdc8ne (Source)
Water is the first medicine.
It affects and connects us all . . .
When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth
And poison her people's water, one young water protector
Takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource. less
By century's end, hundreds of millions of people will be retreating... more
John GreenThis harrowing, compulsively readable, and carefully researched book lays out in clear-eyed detail what Earth's changing climate means for us today, and what it will mean for future generations... It's a thriller in which the hero in peril is us (Source)
Elizabeth KolbertJeff Goodell has taken on some of the most important issues of our time, from coal mining to geoengineering. In The Water Will Come, he explains the threat of sea level rise with characteristic rigor and intelligence. The result is at once deeply persuasive and deeply unsettling. (Source)
Through prose that is by turns passionate and poetic, Abbey reflects on the condition of our remaining wilderness and the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world as well as his own internal... more
Robert MacfarlaneAbbey is full of passion, fury and contempt – a fiery fighter to shake up the sometimes over-tranquil atmosphere of nature writing. (Source)
Hari KunzruHe has a deep love for this place and he’s amusing to read because he’s such a strong personality. His writing is extraordinary. (Source)
At 28 years old, Scott Harrison had it all. A top nightclub promoter in New York City, his life was an endless cycle of drugs, booze, models--repeat. But 10 years in, desperately unhappy and morally bankrupt, he asked himself, "What would the exact opposite of my life look like?" Walking away from everything, Harrison spent the next 16 months on a hospital ship in West Africa and discovered his true calling.... more
Arianna HuffingtonScott Harrison's Thirst is a hope-filled book about finding your purpose in life and pursuing it against all odds. From the many unbelievable stories Harrison shares from the field, to the moments when charity: water’s survival was in question, this book will inspire you to believe that you are more than the obstacles life has put in your path, and the world is more generous than it often seems. (Source)
Adam GrantThis book does for the soul what water does for a parched throat. Scott Harrison shares his extraordinary transformation from party animal into the visionary leader of one of the world’s most creative and crucial charities. His story will inspire you to think bigger, feel deeper, and give more. (Source)
David Heinemeier HanssonScott Harrison, the founder of charity:water, tells his redemption story of being a night-club promoter in NYC that ran the hard and fast life for a decade before rediscovering his faith and committing to a mission for humanity. It’s an at times tense story that gives you a real appreciation for those who choose to give their life to a higher cause. It was also at times a bit of hard book for me... (Source)
In this episode, The Sea of Monsters, Percy sets out to retrieve the Golden Fleece before his summer camp is destroyed, surpassing the first book's drama and setting the stage for more thrills to... more
An NCTE Notable Poetry Book
“McCanna’s carefully chosen words are nearly all onomatopoeia, a cacophony of water sounds that resonates on tongue and ear, demanding to be read aloud…Beautiful.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
In glorious onomatopoeia, Tim McCanna takes the reader on a dazzling journey as a fox seeks shelter from a rainstorm.
Drip
Drop
Plip
Plop
Pitter
Patter
Pat.
As the rain begins, a little fox seeks... more
Don't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Young Nya takes little sister Akeer along on the two-hour walk to fetch water for the family. But Akeer becomes too ill to walk, and Nya faces the impossible: her sister and the full water vessel together are too heavy to carry. As she struggles, she discovers that if she manages to take one step, then another, she can reach home and Mama's care.
An afterword discusses the process of... more
Water: A Natural History takes us back to the diaries of the first Western explorers; it moves from the reservoir to the modern 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. It shows how human-engineered dams, canals and farms replaced nature's beaver dams, prairie dog... more
Fights over the river’s water, and what’s going to happen to it in the future, are longstanding,... more
As if that’s not bad enough, her mother’s reappearance among the Syrena turns the two kingdoms—Poseidon and Triton—against one another. Which leaves Emma with a decision to make: Should she comply with Galen’s request to keep herself safe and just hope for the best? Or should she risk it all and reveal... more
September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy.
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Deborah BlumThat is exactly right – the Galveston Hurricane in 1900. It killed thousands of people. I was just thinking after this latest round of tornadoes what a storm-torn continent we are. But that was the worst of them. There has never been a hurricane like that to hit the United States and essentially to remove a community, destroy a generation living there. (Source)
In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex - an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In... more
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
Ryan HolidayWow, did you know that Moby Dick was based on a true story? There was a real whaling ship that was broken in half by an angry sperm whale. But it gets even more insane. The members of the crew escaped in three lifeboats, traveling thousands of miles at sea with little food and water until they slowly resorted to cannibalism(!) Besides being an utterly unbelievable story, this book also gives a... (Source)
Austin KleonAll of Jansson’s work makes me want to move to Finland and live on an island. Less fanciful than my beloved Moomin comics, these stories have an undercurrent of sorrow to them. Really gorgeous book. (Source)
Denise RussellFascinating small book, immensely interesting and traces human acquaintance with this fish back for a thousand years. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain.
Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees... more
Serafina believes her talisman was buried with an old shipwreck. While researching its location, she... more
Ice Boy has a normal life. He likes goofing around with his siblings ("Don t lick your brother!"). He listens when his parents tell him that being chosen to cool someone s drink or be a cold compress is the best thing that can happen to an ice cube. But Ice Boy wants more. So even though his parents tell him never to go outside, and even though his doctor tells him never to go in the sun, Ice Boy decides to head for the beach, where he rolls... more
At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.
Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition — the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is... more
Why are we drawn to the ocean each summer? Why does being near water set our minds and bodies at ease? In Blue Mind, Wallace J. Nichols revolutionizes how we think about these questions, revealing the remarkable truth about the benefits of being in, on, under, or simply near water.
Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with compelling personal stories from top athletes, leading scientists, military veterans, and gifted artists, he shows... more
How to find your way with... more
An atmospheric, gritty, and compelling novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932, by the bestselling author of Riding Lessons.
When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus... more
Blue Revolution exposes the truth about the water crisis—driven not as much by lawn sprinklers as by a tradition that has encouraged everyone, from homeowners to... more
Don't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
John Bowman is sick. Very sick. While he still can, he has some amends to make and some promises to fulfill. But to do that, he not only needs his ex-wife’s agreement…he needs her.
With the past hovering between them like a ghost, Carol and John embark on a decades-overdue road trip. Together they plunge back into a life without... more
a refreshing drink from a mountain stream. Black-robed women in India stride gracefully through a field with brass water jugs balanced on their heads. Whether they squeeze it out of a burlap bag, haul it home from a communal tap, or get it out of their kitchen faucet, people all around the world are unified by their common need for water. Barbara Kerley brings home this point simply and eloquently in this beautiful and educational picture book that combines striking National Geographic photographs with a poetic text... more
Much has been written about global warming, but the crucial relationship between people and ice has received little focus-until now. As one of the world's leading experts on climate change, Henry Pollack provides an accessible, comprehensive survey of ice as a force of nature and the potential consequences as we face the possibility of a world without ice.
A World Without Ice traces the effect of mountain glaciers on supplies of drinking water and... more
Mark SerrezePollack’s book is about the relationship between people and ice, Arctic and Antarctic exploration, and the development of climate science. It is also a chilling story about the consequences of losing this ice. (Source)
October 1991. It was "the perfect storm"--a tempest that may happen only once in a century--a nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards its hellish center. less
Flint was already a troubled city in 2014 when the state of Michigan--in the name of austerity--shifted the source of its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Soon after, citizens began complaining about the water that flowed from their taps--but officials rebuffed them, insisting that the water was fine. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician at the city's public hospital, took state officials at their word and encouraged the... more
Lexi AlexanderCongrats Doctor Hanna-Attisha. Well deserved. It’s a great book https://t.co/XgoMjECOOW (Source)
Scientists have only recently... more
A new classic of science reporting.”—The New York Times
The true story of a small town ravaged by industrial pollution, Toms River won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and has been hailed by The New York Times as "a new classic of science reporting." Now available in paperback with a new afterword by acclaimed author Dan Fagin, the book masterfully blends hard-hitting investigative journalism, scientific discovery, and unforgettable... more
Adam HaritanI’m currently reading Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin, which tells the 60-year story of how one industrial company’s pollutants have been linked to various cancers in a small New Jersey town. I chose to read this book because I’m very interested in learning the origin of diseases and cancers within the human body. (Source)
Timothy J. JorgensenIt’s very hard to determine whether the cases are clustered because there’s something in that area causing the cancers, or it is simply a random association of cases. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Water books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers.
Until the taps run dry.
Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And... more
The twenty-two essays in this collection swirl and eddy around the author's early-forged bond with the rivers of the Pacific Northwest and their endangered native salmon. With a bracing blend of story, logic, science, and humor, Duncan relates mystical, life-changing... more
Save freshwater by irrigating with washwater
Relieve strain on your septic tank
Purify wastewater without energy or chemicals
Increase your water security
Make your home more resilient to drought, flood, and climate change
Other topics include: why to use or not use grey water, health guidelines, grey water sources, irrigation requirements, seventeen system examples and selection chart, biocompatible cleaners, grey water plumbing principles and components, maintenance and troubleshooting, freezing, rain, preserving soil... more
This is a thoughtful exploration of the ways to get and be wet by children's book author Carey Sookocheff—from puddles and pools, to puppydog kisses. A boy describes how he gets wet at the swimming pool, at the playground, at home. Emotionally resonant and carefully observed, with a gentle bedtime ending, this is a poetic celebration of wetness—and childhood. less
Those who dwell on the river bank apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and... more
The most precious commodity in the world.
Like many other legendary wares, it comes only from the Rain River Wilds.
But how can one trade with the Rain Wilders, when only a liveship fashioned from wizardwood can negotiate the perilous waters of the Rain River? Rare and valuable a liveship will quicken only when three members, from successive generations, have died on board. The liveship Vivacia is about to undergo her quickening as Althea Vestrit’s father is carried on deck in his death-throes. Althea waits for the ship that she loves... more
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