Outstanding Discussion Group Text
Every four months, I participate in one or more university-sponsored, Osher Lifelong Learning In Retirement (OLLI) discussion groups. Each deals with an important contemporary world issue. For the coming Fall 2008 trimester, I've signed up for the course "Water and the Politics of Water," and our textbook is "Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource," by Marq de Villiers. We are supposed to read and discuss the book slowly over the course of eight two-hour-long discussions. That was the plan...but as soon as the book arrived, I started reading it and couldn't put it down! The course won't begin for another two weeks, but I've already devoured the entire book. I don't know when I have ever come across such a compelling and captivating work of popular nonfiction! For the purpose of our discussion group, I cannot think of a better starting-off point.

The book provides an outstanding introduction to a critical contemporary concern. Each chapter focuses on a set of related issues. Taken by themselves, each of these could serve as the basis for thousands of detailed academic articles and books. It is a testament to the author's enormous skill that he was able to condense each set of issues down to a manageable summary, and give these topics just the right balance of fact and human-interest stories to make a page-turning work of can't-put-it-down nonfiction.

Since I was reading the book for a future discussion group, I read it pen-in-hand, liberally highlighting the text and writing notes to myself in the margins. The most frequent note I wrote was: "Needs update!" Typically, before each discussion, participants research the issues in order to bring new and updated material to the forefront. This book is an excellent catalyst for sparking interest for further research. The book was first published in 1999 and republished in a revised and updated version in 2003. Even with the revised version, most of the issues still require significant updating some five years later. Accomplishing this research on the Internet is easy; of course, there is also an overwhelming amount of popular, academic, and technical information available on these issues in public and academic libraries.

Don't get the impression that this book is out-of-date. The emerging water crisis is one of those "slow emergencies" that's happening just outside our range of day-to-day human perception. The vast majority of the damage has been accomplished in the past 100 years--an infinitesimally tiny length of time for any geological process, yet on our human perception scale, still profoundly slow...so slow that many people still do not know that a problem even exists.

The book is a real eye-opener, and a first-rate springboard for discussion groups. I recommend it highly.

Good, but fails about Brazil
I'm an agronomist and I live in Brazil.I read this book, translated to the portuguese, here in Brazil.This book really has many usefull informations, about water suplly in the world.
China, Israel, Africa, USA, Mexico, India are some of the nations who are with water's problems and are focused in this book.
About Brazil this book is a failure.Brazil export far less paper and wood than Canada or USA, but we have far more forests than Canada or USA.And our forests grow far more fast than an american or canadian forest.And this book talks about ecomyths about Brazil.
In fact, this book sometimes reproduces, the ridiculous lies from "green eugenicists" or ecologists.

A real eye opener
This is an excellent overview of the water problems plaguing the globe at the moment, as Marq de Villiers travels far and wide to show just how precious a resource water really is. Most importantly, he does so in a very accessible style of writing that personalizes so many of the issues surrounding the rapid depletion of aquifers by drawing on childhood memories of his home farm in South Africa and first hand sources in the current geopolitical battles.

Of note is the Middle East and North Africa where the battle over water is entertwined with the ongoing political disputes. He notes how carefully Israel has managed its water resources yet is heavily reliant on sources in the West Bank to sustain its agricultural industry. Needless to say this has made the issue of Palestinian statehood that much more difficult. He also explores the thorny relationships along the Nile where downstream Egypt has threatened to go to war with the Sudan and Ethiopia over any divergence attempts with this great river. And, Kaddafi's attempts to create a massive underground river from aquifers deep below the Sahara to coastal Libya, in order to restore badly depleted sources.

But, even in seemingly water rich nations like the US and Canada, water battles persist, mostly to do with the contamination of rivers and aquifers that are the result of industrial waste and poor farming practices. More thorny are precious water rights in dry states like Wyoming and Montana that often end up in court and sometimes settled using frontier justice.

For those not familiar with the looming water crisis, this book will be a real opener, for others it will provide valuable information regarding disputes from the Yellow River in China to the Colorado River, which has long since quit flowing to the Gulf of California. While de Villiers avoids being the doomsayer, he does make one exceedingly worried about the future of this most precious resource.

A Non-Fiction Page turner (!)
This book is by far one of the most interesting, can't-put-it-down non-fictional books I've ever read. I know, I'm speaking in superlatives, but I can't say enough about this book.

I made my thesis topic water-related after I read Water. And yet Water reads like a novel, even though it's packed with information and statistics; de Villiers does an amazing job of making the scientific research information palatable to the average (non-science inclined) reader by weaving in his own experiences and stories.

You can feel his passion for this issue come through in his writing style. He integrates quotes very well and makes the subject come alive. For example, when writing about a severe chemical spill along the Rhine River, he quoted Bertram Muelle, saying: "The river ran red... Otherwise, it looked no different...But I knew that as I watched, its creatures were dying. It was the most terrible feeling. I was frozen, sickened..."He makes turns a very technical and scientific topic into a page-turner. A must-read! P.S. Pay attention to the Canada-US Great Lakes issue, along with the Rhine and Danube Rivers (the subject of my thesis!).

Lacks focus
This a fascinating book about a fascinating (and critical topic). But in appealling to the general reader, Mr. de Villiers inserts too much (for my taste) personal anecdote. A regrettable travelogue quality permeates the narrative.

This is unfortunate, because there is much of value here. In particular, the discussion about the sources and uses of the Jordan River, Isreali concern with controlling its water supply, and water problems of the immediate Arab neighorhood, opened my eyes to an aspect of the current intractable problems of the Middle East.

My advice is to read this with pleasure, but don't be afraid to skim if you find some portions of the narrative uninteresting.