Table of Contents

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"Both drought and flood are on the rise, and Alex Prud'homme, in this fine new account, helps you understand why. We've taken the planet's hydrology for granted for the 10,000 years of human civilization; that's a luxury we can no longer afford."

- Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet; founder of 350.org

"By illuminating the central issues -- water quality, water quantity, ownership, waste, infrastructure -- through the tales of individuals who wrestle with them, Alex Prud'homme makes a vast and desperately serious topic flow beautifully through the rocks and hard places that our planet is caught between"

- John Seabrook, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Flash of Genius

“The problem of water quantity, quality and use are upon us. Alex Prud’homme’s book identifies some of the culprits, including us inattentive citizens and the combination of regulations and markets needed to make clean water usable and available in the Twenty-first Century. This book should wake you up.”

- William D. Ruckelshaus, EPA Administrator under presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan

Literary agent

Tina Bennett
Janklow & Nesbit Associates
445 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022-2606
Phone: (212) 421-1727

Film and Television agent

Matthew Snyder, CAA
Phone: (310) 288-4545

Click here for contact form

Reporting for the book I traveled from inside New York City’s new Water Tunnel No. 3 (the $6 billion water tunnel being drilled 600 feet beneath Manhattan) to the disputed aquifers of Poland Springs, ME, the “intersex” fish and Dead Zone of the Chesapeake Bay, poisoned wells and flooding rivers in the Midwest, the “water-energy nexus” in oil and gas fields, the failed levees of Katrina-wracked New Orleans, drought-threatened Las Vegas, California’s vulnerable San Francisco Delta, and up to the resource wars of the Alaskan Peninsula.