The Water Book

Product Information

What makes this fascinating book stand out from other accounts of how water has shaped human history across the ages is Boccaletti’s brilliant and nuanced treatment of the political and economic dimensions of water’s role in history. The breadth and substance of the narrative are outstanding. The book is a tour de force!” —Michael Hanemann, Julie A. Wrigley Chair in Sustainability, Arizona State

Water: Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021 Open Water: Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021

A dazzling tale spanning millennia, geography, science, and human civilizations, that is more than the story of water. It is a story of ideas and institutions; of tensions between individual enterprise and collective action; of human needs and planetary dynamics. I am astonished at its breadth, depth, and scholarship, at once encyclopaedic yet also highly readable.” —Lynn Scarlett, Chief External Affairs Officer, The Nature Conservancy Kakutani, Michiko (31 March 2016). "Review: In 'The North Water,' a Journey to the Arctic Turns Cutthroat". New York Times . Retrieved 8 December 2016. Casting any other spell that requires water runes will not consume a charge. Even though ice spells are combat spells and require water runes to cast, they do not receive the 20% accuracy and damage bonus, and do not consume any charges, as they are not part of the standard spellbook. The Tome of Water is similar to the Tome of frost in RuneScape 3, in that both are offhand books that supply Water Runes for Magic spells.Throughout the book, we return again and again to a voyage Jha took to the Antarctic on a scientific research vessel. This strand is sometimes successful, sometimes less so, but the cryosphere section is where it best comes to life, as Jha steps on ice-floes, travels across a blinding ice landscape in an amphibious buggy, and visits the huts left by a 1912 scientific expedition led by Douglas Mawson. There is science, but also Adélie penguins, ferocious katabatic winds and plenty of ice (the Antarctic is covered by 10,000tn tons of snow and ice). Other characters are left as blank as the landscape: no one is identified beyond “scientists”, or “the expedition leader”, leaving the penguins to add some colour and personality. Perhaps that’s forgivable, as the book is about the science of water, but it can – ironically – make for a dry read that often feels dutiful rather than captivating.

The North Water (novel) - Wikipedia The North Water (novel) - Wikipedia

As humanity strays across planetary boundaries, Boccaletti’s political biography of water is essential reading. This bold and ambitious saga offers important lessons and instils humility in the reader, both of which we need as we face the dangers of increasing pressure on nature, climate change, and corrosive inequality.” —Rachel Kyte, Dean, The Fletcher School, Tufts University L.A. Times Book Prize finalists include Zadie Smith and Rep. John Lewis; Thomas McGuane will be honored". Los Angeles Times. 22 February 2017 . Retrieved 18 July 2017. Provides essential reading for those seeking to explore how humanity’s relationship with nature has influenced the development of legal and political systems and offers invaluable insights into current debates surrounding climate change and sustainability. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.” —Lee C. Bollinger, President and Seth Low Professor of the University, Columbia University Excellent. Boccaletti takes the reader on a polyglot tour de force that shows how the flow of human history, economics and geopolitics is utterly connected to the constant blue thread of our need for water. Water A Biography poses challenging questions about how best to secure our water future and, as a result, ensure our very existence.” —Dominic Waughray, Managing Director, World Economic Forum Giulio Boccaletti makes a strikingly original and persuasive case that the history of human civilization can be understood as a never-ending struggle over water. Boccaletti’s command of a vast range of material, across time and space, is astonishing.” —Nicholas Lemann, Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism, Columbia University.Alok Jha is one of the brightest young science writers around...He belongs to a select band of science communicators, and knows his science at a deep level and can put it across." Peter Forbes, The Independent. Extraordinary for its monumental scope and piercing insightfulness, Water: A Biography richly enlarges our understanding of our relationship to—and fundamental reliance on—the most elemental substance on earth. This is one of the most ambitious books that I’ve read in a long time. It is both deep and broad.”— NPR, All ThingsConsidered

Books | Waterstones New Books | Waterstones

Against this expansive vision Wilson-Lee sets the work of Luís de Camões, Portugal’s greatest poet. Of particular interest here is The Lusiads, his epic account of Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese heroes who sailed around the Cape of Good Hope opening a new route to India. The title itself clangs with nationalist pomp, being derived from the ancient Roman name for Portugal, Lusitania. In addition, De Camões transforms Da Gama and his crew into Jason and the Argonauts, semi-divine heroes questing east in search of miraculous treasures. Despite his impeccable humanist credentials, the Iberian Shakespeare’s narrative is one of triumphalist place-naming, land-staking and colonial bluster. The British Victorians, naturally, loved him. The story of Water is our story. Giulio Boccaletti takes us on an extraordinary journey through water history, from the retreating glaciers of the ice age which shaped the landscape and the livelihoods of local communities,to the emergence of nation states and the industrialised world, presided over by democrats, despots and dreamers. This book is a cautionary tale for our times” —Alan Yentob, BBC Producer and Presenter

Ian McGuire, The North Water: 'Subtle as a harpoon in the head, but totally gripping', book review 9 February 2016". Independent. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022 . Retrieved 8 February 2016.

A History of Water by Edward Wilson-Lee review – an early

It delights again and again because, as in all the best science writing, the tale is stranger and more curious than one could ever imagine." Stephen Curry, the Guardian. Water seems ordinary - it pours from our taps and falls from the sky. But you would be surprised at what a profoundly strange substance it is. It defies the normal rules of chemistry, it has shaped the Earth, itslife and our civilisation.Without it, none of us would exist. Alice (27 July 2016). "Man Booker Prize announces 2016 longlist". Man Booker . Retrieved 27 July 2016.The wonders that De Camões wrote about were really not that different – he was particularly keen on mermaids while De Góis favoured mermen – but the point was that he took enormous pains to make sure his version kept European man at the centre of the world. And it worked. The Lusiads, first printed in a relatively modest form, was soon being published in elaborate editions crammed with notes that explained the poet’s meaning and placed his works among the great authors of the European tradition. Before long the book was being translated into Latin, Spanish, English and French. Three hundred years later, the Romantics adopted De Camões as their beau idéal of what a poet ought to be, with Wordsworth, Melville and Poe all taking him as their inspiration. Meanwhile Friedrich Schlegel and Alexander von Humboldt wrote admiring commentaries on The Lusiads – “the most perfect of epics” – sealing its author’s place in the literary canon. The North Water is a 2016 novel by English author and academic Ian McGuire. [1] McGuire's focus of study and field of interest is American realist literature [2] which is defined as, "...the faithful representation of reality". [3] The Guardian 's reviewer writes, "The strength of The North Water lies in its well-researched detail and persuasive descriptions of the cold, violence, cruelty and the raw, bloody business of whale-killing." [4] The headline of the Independent Book Review "Ian McGuire, The North Water: 'Subtle as a harpoon in the head, but totally gripping', book review" [5] reinforces the realist aspect of the writing. The North Water was published by Henry Holt and Company (USA) and Simon & Schuster (UK)/ Scribner (UK). Water molecules helped create the Earth, life on it and us. We have built our worlds, and we are ourselves built of this remarkable substance. Jha’s book is often remarkable, too. It is overlong; in places it needed more zealous editing. But it holds wonders enough that you can swim through the flaws, and into its deeps.