July 2023 - AudioFile
Jonathan Beville narrates clearly and makes the most of the rare moments of emotion in this audiobook. We need water to keep us alive, grow our food, make our computer chips, flush our toilets, and perform many other vital services. Sadly, as this audiobook makes clear, many parts of the world do not have access to usable water. Peter Gleick's "three ages" refer to the periods when we used what water was available, when we began shifting water around (as with aqueducts and deep wells), and when we will need to rethink our relationship with water to survive. The argument here is mostly cool and rational, leaving the narrator with little to do except get the ideas across. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
04/03/2023
This uneven offering by Gleick (Bottled and Sold)—cofounder of the Pacific Institute, which researches water conservation—examines water’s role in human history. Gleick begins with the “first age of water” (loosely dating from Earth’s formation through the rise of modern humans) and writes that some scientists believe water was first brought to an otherwise dry Earth by billions of asteroids during the planet’s infancy. Charting the “second age” (from the earliest human civilizations to the present), the author chronicles how ancient Sumerian city-states waged the first war over water nearly 4,500 years ago and suggests that by approximately 700 BCE, Assyrian irrigation channels had inaugurated the “era of large-scale water engineering.” Gleick’s focus strays as he approaches the present and serves up loosely related observations about how the storage of water behind dams across the world has “measurably altered the very rotation of the planet” and how waterborne illnesses kill hundreds of thousands of people a year. Nonetheless, Gleick takes an optimistic view of the future (the “third age”) and urges governments to recognize access to potable water as a human right. The history is eye-opening, but Gleick struggles to fit contemporary issues around water into a cohesive narrative. Still, there are some worthwhile insights in this meandering outing. Photos. (June)
From the Publisher
Water made us, Peter Gleick writes in his magisterial history and future of hydrology and the human planet. But what will we do to it, and what will we make of it now? What we think of as the Anthropocene, and worry over as the coming of global warming, is in many mind-bending and demanding ways a crisis of water—though a soluble one. And there is no better guide to that crisis, or its solutions, than Gleick.”—David Wallace-Wells, journalist and author of The Uninhabitable Earth
“Gleick lays out water’s central role in human history and in our future. The Three Ages of Water is authoritative, far-ranging, and fascinating.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, journalist and author of Under a White Sky
“The honest name for our lovely blue planet probably should have been Water, since it covers most of the globe. And as Gleick makes clear in this sweeping, unprecedented, and positively necessary new book, our chances for a workable future depend on how seriously we take the oceans, lakes, rivers, and aquifers that surround us—indeed, that fill our own cells. This book will change your outlook in deep and motivating ways.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
“Gleick has delivered a book that provides a rich story of humanity’s interaction with water through a lens that helps us understand where we are today as we strive to balance all the demands we place on the planet’s water resources. His context of the past points to a future path that can ensure we strike this balance so everyone has access to water as a basic human right. The additional payoff is this book is accessible to all because of the way Gleick unfolds the story. It is a hopeful call to action grounded in fact, research, and analysis.”—Gary White & Matt Damon, cofounders, Water.org & WaterEquity
“At a time of fraught political divisions and intensifying environmental disruptions, Gleick presents this timely and magisterial report on humankind’s use and misuse of water. He traces the incredible and varied ways water has been used from the earliest civilizations right up to our modern age. Unbelievable technical feats, he says, are now being overwhelmed by a changing climate and vast destruction of life-support systems. Humans now face, Gleick warns, a stark choice: grim, dystopian future or find a sustainable way to live with and manage water.”—Jerry Brown, former governor of California
“What a wonderful book! To understand water is to understand ourselves, our origins, and what lies ahead for us. Gleick tells the story of water in an accessible way that not only warns us about the dangers we are approaching, but also provides us with a vision for a hopeful future.”—Greta Thunberg
“Gleick buoyantly conveys just how special water is... with crucial recommendations for managing the world’s water."—Booklist, starred review
“A magisterial read…crisp, well-crafted, and thoroughly engaging” and “If there’s anything about water that’s not covered in Gleick’s book, it’s probably not worth knowing.”—Sierra
“Thorough, meticulous, and eminently readable.”—Library Journal, starred review
“[A] comprehensive overview of humanity's relationship with water.”—The Arizona Republic
“Gleick’s book is an engaging, detailed and yet wide-ranging, authoritative exploration of the relationship between humans and water and how a positive sustainable world is within our reach.”—Climate with Brian
“[A] timely read…this is more than just a clear-eyed history of our most precious resource; it’s also a guide for how to better manage it in the future.”—Curbed
“[A] magisterial book.”—Covering Climate Now
“A book likely to be on the nightstand of someone you admire.”—Ralph Lauren Magazine
“A fascinating and timely examination…In the end, The Three Ages of Water provides a hopeful and practical vision for a more sustainable water future, one that supports human health, ecosystems, and economic development.”—Science
“An optimistic vision and manifesto for freshwater… [A] timely addition to a large number of works of advocacy, explanation and imagination on the manifold interactions and accelerating crises in humanity’s relation to water.” —Financial Times
“With eloquence and practicality…essential book.” —Nature
“He weaves together themes from archaeology, politics and environmental science to show both the need for and the attainable possibility of a sustainable, third age of water in the future.”—Scientific American
"Very informative and engaging.” —The Water Droplet
“A journey of humanity’s triumphs and tribulations around water use, abuse, and the path to a sustainable future… This inspiring book provides a blueprint for a water-secure future… its positive outlook and vision resonated… I implore you to read the book and reflect on its wisdom.”—Mike Promentilla
Library Journal
★ 06/01/2023
Thorough, meticulous, and eminently readable, this book by water expert and MacArthur Award-winning Gleick both defines and details the three ages of water: water in nature, the emergence of human civilizations and the lessons learned about manipulating water, and the choices that humans have now to prevent a future rife with inadequate resources and to manage and sustain what exists. The author provides a global survey of water that is thorough and culturally and religiously balanced. He does not advocate for just one way to solve all the planet's water woes. Instead, he offers readers a collection of solutions that work together. VERDICT This book urges readers to consider that there are already solutions to the world's water crisis, though humankind may not have the political, social, and cultural will to implement those solutions. Highly recommended for all libraries.—Marjorie Mann
AudioFile - JULY 2023
Jonathan Beville narrates clearly and makes the most of the rare moments of emotion in this audiobook. We need water to keep us alive, grow our food, make our computer chips, flush our toilets, and perform many other vital services. Sadly, as this audiobook makes clear, many parts of the world do not have access to usable water. Peter Gleick's "three ages" refer to the periods when we used what water was available, when we began shifting water around (as with aqueducts and deep wells), and when we will need to rethink our relationship with water to survive. The argument here is mostly cool and rational, leaving the narrator with little to do except get the ideas across. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-25
An expert warning on climate change with an emphasis on water.
MacArthur fellow Gleick, a globally recognized expert on water, begins with statistics—e.g., 97% of the world’s water is salt water, and 80% of the fresh water is used to grow food—and then devotes nearly half of the text to a history of the world. The author’s first “age” of water runs from the Big Bang to the end of the Middle Ages, and the second is “our age,” when scientific and industrial revolutions led to the “replumbing of the entire planet with hard infrastructure that dammed, channelized, collected, treated and redistributed almost every major freshwater source on Earth.” Though we possess the ability to feed Earth’s 8 billion people, deliver safe drinking water, and take away wastewater, it’s not happening because these advances came with “the unintended consequences of pollution, ecological disruption, water poverty, social and political conflict, and global climate change.” The third age of water will lead to a dystopian future unless we fix matters, and Gleick devotes the remainder of the book to that prospect. The most gripping (and distressing) chapters recount our disastrous abuse of freshwater ecosystems, which cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface and continue to shrink. Freshwater fish have the world’s highest rate of extinction among vertebrates. When fossil fuels are exhausted, alternatives exist, but this is not the case with fossil water (wells, aquifers for irrigation). Gleick delivers a realistic solution in which economists do cost-benefit analyses that include the loss of free-flowing rivers, dislocated communities, floods, the costs of human ill health from pollution, pandemics, loss of wilderness and nature, and the “use-value” of natural ecosystems. However, this requires governments to spend money, nations to work together, and communities to “do what needs to be done.” Ultimately, writes the author, “the chronic problem is a lack of will and commitment.”
A well-documented book with more hard facts than usual but not more optimism.
