Free PressProduct DescriptionThe water coming out of your kitchen tap is four billion years old and might well have been sipped by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Rather than only three states of waterliquid ice and vaporthere is a fourth molecular water fused into rock 400 miles deep in the Earth and thats where most of the planets water is found. Unlike most precious resources water cannot be used up; it can always be made clean enough again to drinkindeed water can be made so clean that its toxic. Water is the most vital substance in our lives but also more amazing and mysterious than we appreciate. As Charles Fishman brings vibrantly to life in this surprising and mind-changing narrative water runs our world in a host of awe-inspiring ways yet we take it completely for granted. But the era of easy water is over.
Bringing readers on a lively and fascinating journeyfrom the wet moons of Saturn to the water-obsessed hotels of Las Vegas where dolphins swim in the desert and from a rice farm in the parched Australian outback to a high-tech IBM plant that makes an exotic breed of pure water found nowhere in natureFishman vividly shows that weve already left behind a century-long golden age when water was thoughtlessly abundant?? free?? and safe and entered a new era of high-stakes water. In 2008?? Atlanta came within ninety days of running entirely out of clean water. California is in a desperate battle to hold off a water catastrophe. And in the last five years Australia nearly ran out of water?and had t