Interesting book but it ignores the biggest factor in a functional water cycle: the condition of the soil surface. Plant and litter cover on the soil surface increases infiltration, slows runoff, and slows evaporation. The biggest issue with the water cycle around the world is bare ground. From reading this book, you would only realize that this is a problem in cities, with their impervious pavements.

By now, many people have heard of the Aral Sea drying up or the Colorado River not making it to the ocean. However, this book is a good overview of many other issues people may not have heard about. The author seems to suggest that there could be enough water to go around, but that in order to make sure, we would have to change the way we go about doing a lot of things. The scariest part of the book is that large sections of highly populated countries may be living an unsustainable lifestyle with respect to water. What happens when the wells go dry? Whenever I read books about water, global warming, or oil supply, it makes me think that perhaps these are life and death issues that are put on the back burner by modern society. In any case, while this book may leave you wanting a little more, it'a very readable and informative.

He makes his point over and over and over again. I had to read this for a class, and the running joke we had was that he could have got his point across in 75 pages and saved alot of water from not having to print as many pages.

Overall, this is a really good book, its nearly impossible to counter his argument due to the enormous amounts of facts he has from traveling the globe.

As long as humans have farmed and had cities, they have had water management programs that arguably, as the author notes, lie at the basis of the need for the first central governments. Failures of management have often been the cause of social collapse. The book makes painfully evident the fact that in much of the world we have engineered ourselves into similar predicaments that are unsustainable.

Some of the stories of mismanagement and its consequences are truly wrenching, such as that of the people around the Aral Sea (which has disappeared) or of some people in South India using water that is chemical industry effluent to drink and to water their fields. The book is well worth reading, and eye opening. On the negative side, the author mixes the relatively benign with the truly tragic, the small scale incidents with the enormous tragedies unfolding, without much distinction of scale. In many instances, the story revolves around mismanagement and engineering blunders. In other instances, the story is really that there are simply too many people for the water available in a particular place, with the consequence of forcing the land and water to perform what it can't, or of people forced to drink water laden with arsenic and fluoride in Bangladesh, as there is no alternative.

There are massive water management projects underway in China and India, and the real possibility of disaster on a massive scale if things go wrong. With respect to the Yangtze river project, things can go very wrong, given the high silt content of the river. The present problem of Pakistan is a good example of unsustainable practices with increasingly terrible consequences unfolding.

The concept of "virtual water", that is, shipment to dry regions of crops that require much water to grow, is well worth noting.

The last fifty pages of the book are a book in itself. The topic changes from dire realities to solutions for living in dry conditions. Some are ancient, some recent, some exist in the natural world. Dew ponds, fog harvesting, qanats, or runoff collectors, porous cities. The future, the author suggests, will require local remedies rather than mega-projects. He makes a convincing argument that the local remedies work.

The author does not pay much attention to the consequences of global warming on the redistribution of water in the coming century, an omission remedied in the excellent book he has recently published on the topic of global warming.

Some things that the author or editors should have corrected: water is all about volume, but the volume measures are not defined in a meaningful way. I am sure the original literature refers to values in terms of "per square meter", but the author routinely uses "per 10.8 square feet" instead. Metric measures would have been easier to understand (they give round numbers). An acre-foot of water is the most common measure in the book, but is not defined. The important thing about acre-foot, I learned from Wikipedia, is that it is approximately the water usage of a person per year in advanced societies. The author would have done well to tell his reader this. For those readers who need to be enlightened (as I did) an acre-foot is a cubic measure of an acre (which is one chain x one furlong) x one foot. Good luck defining a chain and a furlong. Far easier to visualize an acre-foot as roughly 1,200 cubic meters, or in terms of usage per person.

A reference list would have been welcome.

Altogether a terrific and alarming book that has its small flaws.

As long as humans have farmed and had cities, they have had water management programs that arguably, as the author notes, lie at the basis of the need for the first central governments. Failures of management have often been the cause of social collapse. The book makes painfully evident the fact that in much of the world we have engineered ourselves into similar predicaments that are unsustainable.

Some of the stories of mismanagement and its consequences are truly wrenching, such as that of the people around the Aral Sea (which has disappeared) or of some people in South India using water that is chemical industry effluent to drink and to water their fields. The book is well worth reading, and eye opening. On the negative side, the author mixes the relatively benign with the truly tragic, the small scale incidents with the enormous tragedies unfolding, without much distinction of scale. In many instances, the story revolves around mismanagement and engineering blunders. In other instances, the story is really that there are simply too many people for the water available in a particular place, with the consequence of forcing the land and water to perform what it can't, or of people forced to drink water laden with arsenic and fluoride in Bangladesh, as there is no alternative.

There are massive water management projects underway in China and India, and the real possibility of disaster on a massive scale if things go wrong. With respect to the Yangtze river project, things can go very wrong, given the high silt content of the river. The present problem of Pakistan is a good example of unsustainable practices with increasingly terrible consequences unfolding.

The author does not pay much attention to the consequences of global warming on the redistribution of water in the coming century, a surprising omission, as he has recently written an excellent book on the topic of global warming.

Some things that the author or editors should have corrected: water is all about volume, but the volume measures are not defined in a meaningful way. I am sure the original literature refers to values in terms of "per meter squared", but the author routinely uses "per 10.8 square feet" instead. Metric measures would have been easier to understand (they give round numbers). An acre-foot of water is the most common measure in the book, but is not defined. The important thing about acre-foot, I learned from Wikipedia, is that it is approximately the water usage of a person per year in advanced societies. The author would have done well to tell his reader this. For those readers who need to be enlightened (as I did) an acre-foot is a cubic measure of an acre (which is one chain x one furlong) x one foot. Good luck defining a chain and a furlong. Far easier to visualize an acre-foot as roughly 1,200 cubic meters, or in terms of usage per person.

A reference list would have been welcome.

Altogether a terrific and alarming book that has its small flaws.

Recounting a series of hydrological disasters past, present, and imminent, Fred Pearce makes a compelling case for rethinking water management from the local to global level. Unlike some other reviewers, I don't find the book's lack of notes and detailed references particularly bothersome because, much like newspaper articles, many sources are unpublished. Likewise, much of the material covers current events and the best sources now postdate the book.

I would consider this an essential introductory read for anyone interested in water resources and environmental policy.

The story of this book is summarized well by the titles of the ten parts into which Pearce organizes his 34 chapters: "When the rivers run dry . . . the crops fail . . . we mine our children's water . . . the wet places die . . . floods may not be far behind . . . engineers pour concrete . . . men go to war over water . . . civilizations fall . . . we go looking for new water . . . we try to catch the rain . . . [and, most hopefully,] . . . we go with the flow." Pearce tells the story from many locations around the world, on every continent except Antarctica. In every place, people are using water in an unsustainable way.

There is plenty of water - - we live on a blue planet, after all. Unfortunately, we use water wastefully, inefficiently (growing cotton in deserts), and the things we do to get water through dams or pumping aquifers make a lot of other problems worse. For example, people destroy wetlands and then build a dam to control the floods that result when high water no longer collects in the wetlands, rushing down the main channel instead. As a result, a sizeable chunk of these problems are self-inflicted.

Pearce tells a compelling story. My only complaint is that he consistently sacrifices depth for breadth. With 34 stories to tell in 311 pages, that is inevitable. His approach to both the problems and solutions is also overly voluntaristic: people don't have to make these bad choices, and people can simply decide to stop making them. If that were true, why are the same bad choices made everywhere?

Clearly, there are structural reasons why everyone tries engineering solutions to problems, "solutions" that just make things worse. Just as clearly, Pearce misses a political economy story here: small groups manage to get governments to spend public money on water projects that take water from large numbers of people and give the water to large farmers, urban consumers, and industry. If that's the central issue, as I think it is, then Pearce really should have analyzed the problem as such - - and thought about how to redesign politics so that this doesn't happen.

Encouraging everyone to behave better, sadly, does not work.

The book deserves 4.5 stars, but for its accessibility to a wide audience I'll round up to 5. If you're looking for treatment at the level of an upper-level undergraduate or above, round down to 4.

I read this book back to back with the author's book on global warming, With Speed and Violence, and I was very impressed with the way both books cover all the bases in concise, thorough chapters that are compelling and engrossing, not just because of the interesting subject matter, but because the author is a terrific writer who knows how to clearly present the science while telling a good story. Although climate change has the potential to remake our planet in the longer term, water scarcity has the potential to affect hundreds of millions of people's lives in the shorter term, yet it doesn't get as much coverage in the media. So I was glad to come across Pearce's book, and I hope it brings more attention to this important issue.

This is a fascinating story, it really is. But how much is true, how much is exaggerated, how much is down right false? The author left no way to verify what he reports, not even his own research notes. I personally believe the main theme of disappearing water supplies due to watering of thirsty high yield crops. But I certainly wouldn't use Pearce's specific facts without double checking them. Too bad, it is a very readable book with many possible insights. If his sources had been included this would easily be a 5+ book.

I used this book in my water resource and policy class during the spring semester of 07. If you've ever truly wanted to understand what one of the largest dilemmas mankind is going to have to face in the coming years, then you should read this book! The author breaks down water in our world in a very detailed manner. One can understand ancient water history, why much of the world is suffering from a water crisis, how much water affluent life styles use, and get a feel for modern water wars in our world. This book alosm makes a great reference for interesting statistics and figures.

This book is an easy read, one you won't want to put down. The author traveled extensively while researching his topic and does an excellent job warning the rest of us of another approaching crisis.

Living in the Western world causes me to take clean water for granted. After reading, "When the Rivers Run Dry", I now realize that water is a very precious and scarce commodity in some other parts of the world and this precious commodity is running low, aquifers are drying up. This book illustrates the importance of wetlands and the far ranging impact to the populations living there, but the wetlands are being destroyed. The rivers are being dammed up and their silt rich outflows don't even make it to the ocean any more. Centuries old wells are drying out and the implications to all this will be future wars and aggressions by governments all over the world.

This book in FUN to read. Forget that the subject is a looming catastrophe, and that the author has done beautiful step by step research, it's really fun to read. AlGore should make this his next movie.

Every kid in the world should read this in Social Studie classes along with Howard Kuenstler's The Long Emergency and then their might be hope for future generation af mankind. If we go on as we are, it's over.

I write this review with some fear and hesitation, because the stakes are so high to do this book justice. It's THAT important.

When the Rivers Run Dry is not just enjoyable to read. It's fascinating, fully engaging, but above all a FRIGHTENING wake-up call how governments, politicians and industry are polluting, mismanaging and squandering the water of virtually all the world's major rivers.

Fred Pearce sounds the alarm with incredible passion and intelligence, presenting an environmental issue that deserves the kind of widespread attention Al Gore has brought to the issue of climate change through his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth.

I highly recommend this book to EVERYONE, with a special request to read this if you can make a difference in the water management policy of your government or your company.

Fred Pearce has traveled the world researching and documenting water issues for over 20 years and in this alarming book, he has spelled-out current trends of misuse of our precious water resources. Aquifers, lakes, and rivers are being drained faster than can be replenished. Worse yet, these bodies of water in many areas are being infiltrated by sewage, toxic chemicals and sea water rendering them useless for future use. Unnecessary dam construction, lake and river diversions goes on despite an abundance of historical and scientific facts demonstrating the adverse effects they cause-- displacing millions of people; flooding useable land while drying-up downstream environs and altering historic weather patterns.

Pearce finishes the book on a lighter note by relating the many sustainable alternatives to depleting aquifers, dam building, and lake diversions, although at current usage, one wonders if this will help reduce the rate of depletion and escalating environmental damage. Pearce makes it clear that we humans must immediately come up with a new world-wide ethic on water consumption and distribution before we hit the point of no return.

After reading this fine, in-depth expose' of the world water crisis, I was reminded of the potent quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin: "When the well runs dry, we shall know the value of water" (one of many variations spelling-out the same profound message).

It is impossible to make responsible decisions without decent information. I found this book both readable and extremely informative. On the other hand, it is so filled with information that is a call to awareness of the global crisis facing us that I needed to put it down periodically to avoid depression and/or extreme cynicism. Still, it is an important book to read and I do make better decisions on a daily basis because of it. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who feels that they want to know what's actually going on and doesn't want to be hit with the coming crisis blindsided.