Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind

by Brian M. Fagan

In Elixir , New York Times bestselling author Brian Fagan tells the story of our most vital resource and how it has shaped our history, from ancient Mesopotamia to the parched present of the Sunbelt. Fagan relates how every human society has been shaped by its relationship to our most essential resource. This sweeping narrative moves across the world, from ancient Greece and Rome, whose mighty aqueducts still supply modern cities, to China, where emperors marshaled armies of laborers in a centuries-long struggle to tame powerful rivers. As the earth's population approaches nine billion and ancient aquifers run dry, we once again remember the importance of this vital resource. To solve the water crises of the future, we may need to adapt the water ethos of our ancestors, captured here in rich detail by Brian Fagan.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Environment, Audiobook, Nature, Anthropology

416 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2011

About the author

Brian Murray Fagan was a British author of popular archaeology books and a professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I quite honestly didn’t think I would enjoy this book quite as much as I did. This was really fascinating, so fascinating that it was totally absorbing. While accessible to the common reader, Fagan’s book is one that students could use, so it can, at times, be technical. Still fascinating. Though, a general knowledge of world history would be helpful.
But honestly, I didn’t think reading about water management would so engrossing. Okay, I should have known better, after all I enjoyed the book about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and that made screws have my undivided attention. (No, not that kind of a screw). The book didn’t annoy me in the least, even when Fagan went on his brief flights of fantasy to illustrate how certain things would work.
I learned so much. Not only about how aqueducts worked, but the history of the Bali rice paddies and the part that temples play in their upkeep. Or perhaps it was the theory for why Mayan temples were designed the way they were. It wasn’t just to be strange.
And wait until you hear about how much of Iran is covered by qunats and where Segovia gets its water from.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book: Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind
Author: Brian M. Fagan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press; 1st edition (14 June 2011)
Language: English
Hardcover: 416 pages
Item Weight: 612 g
Dimensions: 12.9 x 3.56 x 27.13 cm
Price: 3120/-

‘As I researched Elixir, I was struck by how little most people’s relationship with water changed over the thousands of years from the first appearance of agriculture some twelve thousand years ago into medieval times and beyond. Even today, millions of subsistence farmers live from harvest to harvest, from one rainy season to the next, dependent on unpredictable water supplies from the heavens. This led me to think of the history of humans and water in terms of three stages, which overlap with one another. The first goes back to the remote past and endures in places today.’ -- Brian M. Fagan

I have little hesitation in my mind that this is one of the best books that I have ever read.

This book tells you the story of Water.

Water is at once mundane and mysterious, ubiquitous and precious. Odourless, colourless and tasteless, it is unique as a chemical compound in terms of its stability, solvent properties and prospects as an energy source.

Water cuddles and soothes us, provides nourishment and a shot in the arm. It is something that humankind has cherished since the beginning of history, and means something different to everyone.

Again, we turn a tap, and it is there for drinking, something we take utterly for granted. So ordinary is water in our daily lives that we are apathetic to it and have been for a long time.

Of all the resources that we rely on for endurance in today’s world, water is the slightest appreciated and definitely the most misunderstood.

Yet, it covers almost 70% of the earth’s surface and making up a similar proportion of the human body, it is indispensable to life in all its forms and is at both the start and the heart of the evolutionary chain. The most primitive single-celled organisms are almost wholly composed of water, as is the human embryo.

The breaking of waters is the indication that human life is all set to emerge from the watery environment of the womb.

For most readers of this post, water is an everyday commodity instantly available at the turn of a tap. In many parts of the world, however, it is becoming increasingly scarce. Women in developing countries walk an average of 3.7 miles to get a hold of clean water.

Global consumption is rising twice as fast as the increase in world population and experts in international relations and conflict studies forecast that the major wars of the 21st entury will be fought over water.

Water has held a fascination for some of the greatest minds in history. Drawings and communications scattered through the papers of Leonardo da Vinci show that it was the foremost obsession of his intellectual attention throughout his life. ‘Water’, he held, ‘is the driver of nature, the vital humour of the terrestrial machine’ (Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p.18). Leonardo felt that he might crack the mysteries of creation by studying the laws of its movements. A gigantic treatise on the subject remained unfinished at his death.

It is not surprising, given its essentialness to life in all its forms, that water has been revered throughout human history. Wells, springs, pools, lakes and rivers have been regarded as principally consecrated sites, the dwelling places of deities, gateways to the next world and sources of curing and renovation.

The foundation texts of the world’s great religions are united in describing water as the principal agent of creation and source of life, the special gift of God or the gods with exceptional power to purify, cleanse and renew.

Elixir revolves around three broad themes.

1) The first is gravity, the fact that water flows downslope, from a higher point to a lower one.

a) There was no other way of moving water except for small-volume pumps and waterwheels until the Industrial Revolution. Even today, gravity plays a central role in water management everywhere, even with long-distance aqueducts such as those that feed vast cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix.

b) Ancient Roman and Greek engineers were maestros of gravity-fed water delivery. So were the Chinese and the Inca of Peru.

c) Dozens of smaller-scale societies and village farmers around the world still use gravity to irrigate their fields and to water their beasts. Some of them have maintained sustainable water supplies for centuries and are capable of doing so indefinitely if other users don’t hijack their sources with pumps and earthmoving machinery.

d) This book is a history of the conquest of gravity, the silent, ever-present force behind nearly all human relationships with water. Gravity lies behind the supple, relentless forces of water, but those who take advantage of it don’t pretend to control them.

2) The second theme is the secure association between ritual and water management of all kinds.

a) Water has a special place in all human societies. It’s the essence of fertility and growth, of sustained life, associated with cleansing and renewal, with the spiritual forces of the cosmos.

b) Man has worshipped it and celebrated its magical, flowing qualities, commemorated its mystical dimensions. We’re in awe of water.

c) As fisherfolk, sailors, and surfers we respect its mysterious attractions.

d) At the same time, it has an indispensable role in human life, for it lies behind everything we do, from cooking food and washing clothes to agriculture, cattle herding—even baseball, tennis, and golf.

e) Water is one of the few cultural universals, inspiring a profound mingling of ritual and day-to-day use.

3) The third theme is technology versus sustainability, efforts at living within one’s hydrological means.

a) The past teaches us much about water management and has significant lessons for today and the future.

b) Early theories about ancient irrigation conjured up dramatic images of slaves laboring waist deep in mud at the bidding of a harsh supervisor’s whip.

c) Such scenarios featured anonymous regiments of employees, who transformed sites and created the underpinnings of preindustrial civilizations like those of Mesopotamia and China.

The book has been divided into five parts, containing the following chapters:

Part I Canals, Furrows, and Rice Paddies
1. The Elixir of Life
2. Farmers and Furrows
3. “Whoever Has a Channel Has a Wife”
4. Hohokam: “Something That Is All Gone”
5. The Power of the Waters

Part II Waters from Afar
6. Landscapes of Enlil
7. The Lands of Enki
8. “I Caused a Canal to Be Cut”
9. The Waters of Zeus
10. Aquae Romae

Part III Cisterns and Monsoons
11. Waters That Purify
12. China’s Sorrow

Part IV Ancient American Hydrologists
13. The Water Lily Lords
14. Triumphs of Gravity

Part V Gravity and Beyond
15. The Waters of Islam
16. “Lifting Power … More Certain than That of a Hundred Men”
17. Mastery?

The early chapters of the book: --

This book explores all comportment of human societies, well known and obscure. We cannot understand the multifaceted relationships between humans and water without traveling far beyond the classic archaeological and historical stomping grounds of Europe, the Mediterranean, and Central America.

Nor can we visit the history of humans and water along a linear chronological track. In Africa and elsewhere, and even a superficial examination of the literature on ancient water, makes it clear that some really simple water-management approaches, such as furrow irrigation, not only nourished farmland many thousands of years ago but also thrive in self-sustaining societies into the 21st century.

For this reason, the early chapters of the book examine furrow irrigation in a few ancient and still-existing subsistence-farming societies. The latter are self-sustaining in a world where much water management has moved far beyond sustainability. Some of these societies, like the Pokot of Kenya, administer their water systems by consensus and discussion.

Others, like the rice farmers of Bali, depend on ancient rituals and long-established administrative and religious mechanisms to share water from upslope with farmers living much further downstream. The Bali system is so effective that Dutch colonial authorities and their successors failed to come up with anything more efficient.

Then there’s the remarkable case of the Hohokam of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, who flourished effortlessly in one of the driest environments in the Americas for a thousand years before prolonged droughts during the Medieval Warm Period caused a now-much-more-elaborate farming society to implode.

The contrast with the vast urban sprawl of today’s Phoenix, which lies atop the Hohokam’s ancient irrigation works, is both disturbing and enlightening.

The middle chapters of the book: --

The middle chapters of the book do form a chronological gradient, telling the complex story of water management in the Mediterranean world. Here, we navigate some relatively familiar historical territory, and also examine much that has rarely emerged from the specialist literature. Like the study of ancient climate, archaeological studies of broad landscapes, as opposed to individual cities, towns, and villages, have gone through a scientific revolution in recent years.

Today’s archaeologists wear out shoe leather like their predecessors, but they now have a far wider range of tools to draw on. Aerial photographs, satellite maps, global positioning systems (GPSs), and other tools help them locate long-vanished canals and house mounds that give more complete pictures of ancient landscapes.

From the Mediterranean world, the book travels to India and Southeast Asia, to a world of cisterns and dams, where monsoon rains played a central role in maintaining sustainability. Here again, new discoveries are rewriting history, as the scale of water-management works at sites like Anuradhapura, in Sri Lanka, and the city of Vijayanagar, one of the largest cities in ancient South Asia, is becoming apparent after centuries of relative historical obscurity.

Then there’s Angkor, in Cambodia, where water is seemingly abundant, but where recent fieldwork in the hinterland surrounding Angkor Wat shows that monsoon failures and drought drastically affected the Khmer Empire and may even have contributed to its collapse.

China offers another dramatic contrast, a land of two worlds: the south, with its abundant water and rice agriculture, and the far more challenged north, where famine, drought, and water shortages have haunted village farmers since the beginnings of farming life. The ambitious plans that today’s China has for moving water from the south to the north have deep roots in history, where emperors’ minions set thousands to work building long canals and miles of dikes.

Water management in ancient America, discussed next, offers striking parallels between the water problems at Angkor and those of the ancient Maya, to whom irrigation was unknown and whose farmers relied on raised fields in swamps and on tropical subsistence farming.

In the end, prolonged droughts were one of the causes of the collapse of much of Maya civilization in the tenth century C.E., whereas the Andeans survived drought after drought along the arid Peruvian coast through conservative, careful water management. The Inca, high in the Andes, were water engineers of genius and triumphant users of gravity.

The concluding chapters of the book: --

Finally, we return to the Near East and West. Humans have always lived in unpredictable environments, where water resources lie irregularly distributed across the landscape. That landscape can be arid, with only seasonal rainfall or virtually no rainfall at all. Such was the world of Islam, whose water engineers designed gardens that truly offer a blueprint for paradise in a water-deprived world.

However, Islamic water management faltered, in part because of drier conditions and political upheavals, as well as growing populations, but primarily because their engineers came up against the limitations of their technology and lacked the circumstances to innovate.

Instead, it was medieval Europe, with its plentiful water, that ultimately developed the technologies that changed human relationships with water during the nineteenth century.

‘Elixir’ is about changing human relationships with water over thousands of years. Our story is a complex meld of climate change, gravity, human modifications of the natural environment, and technological innovation, kept in balance by intricate ritual observance and religious belief. There are many smaller-scale societies around the world that manage their water in sustainable ways, and will continue to do so if the greedy maw of industrial civilization does not shrink groundwater levels and divert streams. Even during drought cycles, the most resilient of these societies survive.

Water is holy. Water features in both the opening and closing passages of the Christian Bible. The first chapter of Genesis portrays the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, in keeping with the finding of science that all life owes its origin to water and that it was from a primeval watery soup that the first organisms emerged. The last chapter of the Book of Revelation describes ‘the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb’ through the middle of the new heavenly city of Jerusalem.

In one Hindu creation story primordial cosmic man, Purusa, is born out of the waters and in another the divine swan, Hamsa, hatches the golden egg of earth as she swims on the primordial waters.

In several other cultures and religious traditions what have become known as earth-diver creation myths tell of an animal or bird, sent by the Supreme Being, entering the primal or maternal waters as a kind of midwife and bringing back the mud or clay of creation. The waters here are envisaged as the unformed female principle and the diver as the creator god’s emissary into that principle, out of which will come cosmos.

And yet, we live in the industrial age of water as a commodity, yet alongside us thrive much smaller societies that use water wisely, as they always have. Now we are entering a new era caused by our own wastefulness.

The new era, of carefully husbanded water supplies, is one of conservation. History teaches us that the societies that last longest are those that treat water with respect, as an elixir of life, a gift from the gods.

We seem to have forgotten this compelling lesson.

This most wonderful book does a great job in reminding us that.

Grab a copy if you choose.

[Dwain · Rating 2 out of 5]

I always enjoy reading (or listening) to something new, and "Elixir" was definitely something I hadn't read about before. Fagan, however, managed to tire even me with an incredible amount of detail about historical water management systems. I gave "Elixir" 2 stars because the book is very informative and there were sections that I found fascinating.

I enjoy a lot of things, but I got bored with very detailed descriptions of sluices, catchments, qanats, etc. Fagan doesn't even define many of these terms, which you wouldn't know unless you are a water engineer. After extensively detailing one culture's water management systems he would proceed to another culture and give excruciating detail on the next. If you don't have patience for dense books, don't read this one.

This book discusses a subject that can be heavily political with environmentalist wackos, and capitalist apologists going at it from both sides. My first impression was that Fagan belonged in the former category. He routinely romanticizes past cultures and criticizes modern societal attitudes. He attributes the environmental friendliness of past cultures to their environmental virtue - their love and respect of nature, and reverence for water itself. I would argue that much of this supposed virtue was the result of poor technology and scarcity forcing a greater appreciation on them. I was pleasantly surprised then, when in the final chapter he attributed our present unsustainable water usage rates to politicians protecting water usage from market forces that would otherwise force people to conserve and apply water to its most beneficial uses. Overall he seems to have a fairly balanced view, but does seem to romanticize the past.

On the positive side, Fagan has brought together an incredible amount of information. He covers ancient African cultures (I don't remember the names), native American farmers in the southwest called the Hohokam, ancient Mesopotamian cultures, Angkor Wat, Persia, the Muslim empires, medieval Europe, modern western culture, and I'm sure a couple others I've forgotten. He talks about what made each culture successful, covering engineering, social, and climatic aspects of the problem. He covers the interplay of all these forces on the success or failure of each culture.

I recommend this book only for those with a high tolerance for density and detail, or those who are involved in the water industry.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book plows through loads of history, explaining how traditional civilizations around the world have managed water. The focus, it seems, is on relatively arid areas, where water management has been a massive, ongoing challenge. The text seems fairly technical and dry at first, but you get a mounting appreciation for how crucial water has been as the precondition for every human settlement. Some traditional systems offer real insight for the future. I like the ancient cities with separate systems for drinking water, water for other purposes, and waste water. All told, Fagan gives a ton of context for the challenge before us.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook. Very interesting book about water and how civilization centered on water and much of the power resided in who controlled water.

[Todd Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting.
- Unknown (though often mis-attributed to Mark Twain)

The history of modern civilization is very much a history of human’s increasing ability to manage water. About 10,000 years ago people realized they could improve the reliability of their food supply by growing their own crops. It was a small leap from there to the recognition that yields could be improved and drought related disaster averted by diverting water from a nearby stream or lake. The history ever since consists of ever larger water storage and diversion projects to support the agricultural activities necessary to feed ever larger populations.

Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind by Brian M. Fagan, a professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is an exhaustive (and exhausting) catalog of hydrological developments throughout history and across the globe.

I don’t have a lot to say about this lackluster book. I found it to be rather short on interesting information and rather long on … uh … length. It goes on and on in ways that are largely repetitive (there are only so many ways to describe a trench to deliver water to crops). Fagan also re-uses a literary technique he put to good use in Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans (the only other book I’ve of his that I’ve read). That being, the use of fictional verbal vignettes to describe what life must have been like during the periods he describes. Unfortunately, whereas in Cro-Magnon I felt they brought the history to life, in Elixer Fagan waxes overly poetical in a way that distracts from the text.

I did learn a few things though:
- That a “qanat” is a horizontal well dug into a hillside to tap an underground aquifer.
- That lead pipes would have been an unlikely source of lead poisoning to Romans due to the fact that calcium buildup would have coated the inside of the pipes.
- That Roman aqueducts precisely engineered gradients (that of the Pont du Gard is only 34 cm per km).
- That a ‘noria’ is a hydro-powered waterwheel used to lift water.

[Andrew Updegrove · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brian Fagan is an astonishingly prolific producer, for a non-fiction writer, having produced more than three dozen, research-basee books (at the rate of more than one a year!)focusing on the areas of archaeology, anthropology and the impact of climate change over the millenia on humanity. I've read at least a half a dozen of them, and he continues to pump them out faster than I've been knocking them off.

That's rather remarkable, given the fact that they are all intensively detailed, although somewhat less so when one notes that many of his books overlap in areas that doubtless lie in the sweet spot of his professional areas of expertise (several, for example, are dedicated to various aspects of the entry of humankind into the New World). Still, how does he do it?

Elixir provides perhaps a clue. While it is loosely organized along nominally topical lines (Canals, Furrows and Rice Paddies; Waters from Afar), some of these categories are in themselves rather eccentric (Cisterns and Monsoons). One gets the impression that he is simply fascinated by everything, facile at taking notes on old-fashioned file cards, and remarkably facile at shuffling them into a stack that must almost instantaneously be able to translate into finished prose. It's all quite readable, although often more detailed than the typical reader is likely to have wished for. Perhaps if he were to slow down the pace a little he'd have time for another round of editing, thereby making the reader's job more rewarding.

That said, Fagan knows his stuff, and if the relationship of man to water and vis-versa is a topic of interest to you, as indeed it has been, and continues to be, fundamental to human existence, then Elixir will certainly provide you with a very thorough and informative read.

Unless it drives you to drink. Cheers!

[Dennis Hidalgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is not your traditional World History, or even your common environmental history book. It does not serves as a beginner history book either. The reader may benefit more with a broad context of world history since Fagan assumes the reader knows the periods of time, the places, and many of the people to whom he refers in his book.

He proves that through the study of water usage we can understand human societies both in comprehensive and detailed ways. Through his tales and technically, yet easy to follow descriptions, the reader can see both the individual and the society. And what comes out is that egalitarian societies were the best ones to manage water resources.

A conscientious reader would come out of this reading appreciating water in a unique (if not historical) way, and as an important side-effect, making sense of much of the challenges we have and continue to face.

[Lianne Burwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've read some of Mr Fagan's previous books, such as The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, this book covers a lot of familiar ground, just using water and it's uses to cover human history and changes in civilization. From the earliest attempts at simple irrigation to the Roman aqueducts, to industrial age technology, with warnings about the current attitude that water is in infinite resource and the resulting overuse.

The writing is clear and concise, and the book has just the right amount of illustrations to enhance the text without overwhelming it. I found it both informative and entertaining, and it left me thinking as well.

[Clayton Owen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two stars are for the research that went into the book, apart from that it has very little to recommend it. The title is misleading, it is not a history of water, it is a history of water delivery systems in the ancient world. There is very little discussion apart from the final chapter about anything that has happened in the last 1000 years. I suspect the author got an advance based on his previous titles and then produced a work that was nothing like what was originally expected by the publishers. The blurb describes the book as having a 'dazzling narrative'. It doesn't, it is turgid and more of what I would expect from a textbook on hydrological engineering. There is undoubtedly a book to be written about man's use and relationship with water over the centuries but this isn't it.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humans need water. From ancient Mesopotamia to the parched present of the Sun Belt societies have arranged themself to capture and use this resource. Fagan show how ancient Greece and Rome built aqueducts, the Chinese built canals to tame their rivers and how India's culture of purification meant that they had more public wells than Europe.

Why I started this book: It's been on my list for a while... and I love a good history.

Why I finished it: Detailed and interesting to learn so much more about ancient technologies and methodologies to get water to cities. It wasn't as easy as turning on the tap and many regions lived at the edge of technological solutions and local conditions, making them vulnerable in times of stress and drought. Fagan argues that we are on the edge too, because of our permissive public policies.

Buddy Read: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Also Salt: A World History for another narrow history of a resource.

[Cerebralcortext · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very neat book, full of great details regarding the hydrological systems of many societies, some well known and others not so much. That very breadth is its weakness though, for at times Fagan seems to jump around without having really discussed anything of value—the Aztecs, for example, are given an introduction before suddenly performing a volte-face towards the Maya, then swinging over to Peru. The brevity of this book also works against its goal as it turns into a repetitive parade of weirs, aqueducts, and qanats. While it serves to illustrate the remarkable similarity of human invention across the spectrum of societies, it lacks the staying power which deeper discussion of their individual quiddities would have accomplished. As an introduction to further reading, however, it is indeed a valuable resource. It also raises questions on the commodity culture we have surrounding water. Fagan’s treatment of the respect and rituals surrounding irrigation and catchment was a particular standout, albeit one that, as above, titillates without satisfying. I can’t really fault a popular history for not being as comprehensive as I would like, and he does include a good bibliography at the end that contains research and articles that I would like to venture to read one day. This is a book that will not quench your thirst; nevertheless, who would turn down a drink?

[Daggry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading through this book sometimes felt like drinking straight from a firehose. There’s abundant detail. But thanks to the interesting story it tells (and an excellent audiobook narrator), the experience seldom grew monotonous.

Still, I will struggle to remember the smallest fraction of specific practices@times@places. Instead, what I’ll take away is the ingenuity and range of ways humans have solved the problems of water—the technologies, rituals, and sociopolitical systems devised to manage water, whether there’s too much, too little, or erratic availability. The commonalities are striking, too, all over the world and stretching back as far as the dawn of agriculture. I wasn’t as interested in hearing about water as a source of spiritual inspiration and ritual practice until I learned how impossible it is to separate out that role of water from all the others.

It’s obvious that the author aimed for a hopeful ending. But seeing how far we’ve outstripped our hydrological means in the years since we stopped relying on gravity for water management, it’s hard not to come away with a sense of doom.

[Tat Ebihara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brian Fagan cracks open our relationship with water and how it is not just a commodity to be exploited. I'm a water engineer and fascinated by civilizations, so this is totally in my wheelhouse, but it might be a bit dry for some readers. Fascinating to hear the seldom heard stories of small communities in African and Asia and South/Central America and about the sacredness of water. At other times, the book reads like Jared Diamond's rise and fall of civilization narratives. I really like how Fagan weaves spiritual and religious views of water and how it has been the source of our livelihood and health. Strong summary in the final chapter gives us a lot to ponder of how we are to move forward as a global civilization. This was an really unique view of history and I want to read more like it!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 star review for this book, mostly for the sheer volume and thoroughness of the research that must have gone into it. Fagan really, REALLY knows a lot about ancient water systems: reclamation, conservation, storage, transportation, recycling, and etcetera.
Where the author and the narrative falls short is engagement. This is an immensely important topic and very prescient given all the talk about global warming, rising sea levels, and the decline of the amount of arable land and potable water. In this reader's opinion, there is just too much minutae about the ancient water storage and irrigation systems used. Many if not most of the civilizations, societies, and cultures that Fagan discusses used startlingly similar systems, independent of outside influences: water systems engineered and constructed are described in the most minute and almost mind-numbing detail. A summary chapter or two would have sufficed to cover these similarities and maybe there could have mentioned differences is scale and scope. Yet every civilization's water systems are discussed thoroughly, leading to a lot of redundancy and repetitiveness.

For me, the most informative and interesting chapters on the ancient civilizations of China, India, sub-Saharan Africa, Rome, and then the final chapter, which is TOO short, given the length of the other chapters. This is the chapter that NEEDED to be longer, as it discussed the contemporary problems of drying aquifers, declining water supplies, suggestions and policies on water management, and indeed the coming conflict between people and nations for this elixir of life. Doomsday predictions aside, water is the most valuable resource (and I would argue commodity) in the world today. We need to find a way to sustain a growing global population. Fagan discusses this all-too-briefly in the last chapter. I really wanted more there.

I enjoyed it well enough, but I wanted to be engrossed and engaged more, and ironically, this was a very dry read. I think most people interested in this type of topic would do well to read Jared Diamond's books.

[Christopher Little · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some reviews commented on the dry boringness of this book, and I didn't feel this was true until the last third when it really became a slog. The book is very well researched, as other reviews have already pointed out, but one detail that was curious to me was how often Fagan listed incorrect translations of measurement between imperial and metric. I don't know if I had an early edition of the book that hadn't been edited properly but sometimes he would be out by a little bit (listing 6ft as 2m) or a lot (some square ft to square m translations were hundreds of units off). Also, a book written in 2011 by an established historian/archaeologist should know better than to use the term "Aborigine" for goodness sake.

[Irene · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book taught me a lot of ancient water supply systems, but didn't otherwise teach me a lot of water - I was expecting a bit more on water's uses by humankind medicinally, for food, for religious rituals, etc, but I found this book centred more on how humankind built systems to access water (without going into any depth as to what that water was then used for). Now, I don't know if that would have made for a more interesting book overall, but the lack of it did leave me feeling unsatisfied.

Fagan obviously did a lot of research for this book, but I found the delivery of that information and the writing to be quite dry (pun intended) and textbook-like. That is likely why it took me almost a year to finish the book...

[Fadri Mokolintad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Agak sedikit membosankan bila nggak fokus pada detail2 teknis yang dibahas. Tapi general ideanya mantap. Bahwa bangsa2 terdahulu memperlakukan air dengan penghormatan yang tinggi. Mereka berusaha menaklukkan air tapi pada akhirnya air selalu tidak bisa dikuasai. Dia punya 'jalan' sendiri. Betul bahwa kita harus belajar banyak dari pengalaman orang2 jaman dulu dalam hal manajemen air (khususnya Irigasi yg banyak dibahas di buku ini). Celakanya, sepertinya manusia jaman now memperlakukan air layaknya sumberdaya yg nggak bakal habis. Kuras aja terus, cemari aja terus, ampe kita yang hancur. Oh human, plis dont be stupid in this bussiness..
Nice book I think...

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

90% of this book is a generally interesting and fact-filled survey of pre-industrial water use technologies and practices from throughout the world. Not a whole lot of conclusions, other than for the most part, water use was controlled and governed at the village level. The last 10% of the book is a screed about modern water use practices in the American West, where the author now lives.

[Derek Henderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Starts with something of a splash but quickly gets bogged down in the minutiae of water-delivery technology through the millennia. This just keeps going on and on. Fagan's occasional flight of fancy, when he imagines scenes of ancient life, bore rather than illuminate. Another topic crying out for essayistic treatment mushrooms into a yawn-inducing book.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easily understood and quite a pleasant audio book, with lots of interesting details of water management throughout human history. Many civilizations were successful in moving water to where it was needed while still conserving their resource; some were not. Today's decision-makers need to pay attention.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an interesting read. It covered some information I was already familiar with, but it provides a great overview of how water has been used by various civilizations. Most chapters were engaging, but a couple dragged. It was a bit repetitive at times. And the conclusion was another sobering reminder that humans are facing a reckoning with water usage.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book. Humankind's relationship with water has interested me for a long time, so I thought this would be a great fit. Unfortunately I couldn't get into the book. It bored me. Sigh.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t finish this one. It was too dry of a read.... (I know.) Facts, data, well researched, yet the book could have been significantly shorter. A bit more narrative and personality to the book is needed—I know it is non-fiction, but the book was just “off” for me.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely slow and way too long. I am very interested in water resources, but I did not enjoy this book (which I did finish reading). Fact after disjointed fact without a common theme or central thesis.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed book about the history of water and humankind. As the climate crisis accelerates so too will drought conditions worsen and expand. The wealthy of the world still act as though water and other precious resources are infinite and deprive others of accessing what they need.

[James Biser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book about the history of humans as they deal with water. It is fantastically researched and well written. All life depends on water. Human progress has built upon the mechanics of flowing water and the chemistry of it as well.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book a lot more than reading it.

[Jeff Norville]

Aside from the "water flows downhill" gaff, a well-reasoned, historically insightful account.

[عبد الله القصير · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب جميل يحكي قصة تفاعل مختلف الحضارات مع الماء والريّ.