Deep Water The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, And the Environment

ADiscoverMagazine Top Science Book of the Year A Northern California Book Award Finalist There are more than 45,000 of them in the world. They have altered the speed of the planet's rotation, the tilt of its axis, and the shape of its gravitational field. They influence landscapes and societies. They are dams, and inDeep Water,Jacques Leslie offers an incisive, searching, and beautifully written account of the emerging crisis over dams and the world's water. Reporting in the tradition of John McPhee and Peter Matthiessen, Leslie examines the crisis through the lives of three people: Medha Patkar, the world's foremost anti-dam activist; Thayer Scudder, an American anthropologist; and Don Blackmore, an Australian water manager. In each of these engrossing portraits, Leslie shows how dams seduce national leaders with seeming bounties of water and power but end up producing blights on the citizenry and landscape.Deep Wateris an eloquent and important book about the water crisis and a startling look at the fate of our planet.Leslie, Jacques is the author of 'Deep Water The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, And the Environment', published 2006 under ISBN 9780312425562 and ISBN 0312425562.