Water is the most valuable resource and the most passionately contested. Drought has become an increasingly extreme problem in many parts of the world, and it is predicted that 60% of the major cities in Europe will run short of water in the next decade. In industrialized countries per capita water usage continues to rise intractably, despite strenuous efforts by environmentalists and resource managers to encourage conservation. Conflicts over water and environmental degradation from the overuse of resources are intensifying. Water is not merely a physical resource: in every cultural context it is densely encoded with social, spiritual, political and environmental meanings, and these have a powerful effect upon patterns of water use and upon the relationships between water users and suppliers. This book makes an in-depth analysis of the meanings of water and considers how they are experienced and formed at an individual and societal level. Focusing on the River Stour in Dorset, Strang draws upon a wide range of data: ethnographic research, cultural mapping, local archives and folklore. She explores the controversies surrounding water ownership and management, and the social and political questions raised by water privatization in the UK. The topical nature of these issues and their global relevance make this book a vital contribution to contemporary research on water and an essential read for anyone with an interest in getting under the surface of one of the worlds most important social and environmental issues.

Part history, part science and part philosophy and spirituality, "Water Is..." combines personal journey with scientific discovery that explores water's many identities and ultimately our own. Written by internationally published author, teacher and limnologist Nina Munteanu.

In this dazzling reconsideration of the language of the Old and New Testaments, acclaimed scholar and translator of classical literature Sarah Ruden argues that the Bible’s modern translations often lack the clarity and vitality of the originals. Singling out the most famous passages, such as the Genesis creation story, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Beatitudes, Ruden reexamines and retranslates from the Hebrew and Greek, illuminating what has been misunderstood and obscured in standard English translations. By showing how the original texts more clearly reveal our cherished values, Ruden gives us an unprecedented understanding of what this extraordinary document was for its earliest readers and what it can still be for us today.

At a time of great turmoil and crisis, environmentally, socially and politically, water has emerged as a topic of huge global concern. Moreover, many argue that what is needed in order to change our relationship with the environment is a cultural paradigm shift. To this end, this volume brings together diverse approaches to exploring human relationships with the watery world and the other living things that rely upon it. Through exploring multiple creative ways of engaging with water and people, the volume adds to the current zeitgeist of writing about water by expanding the discussion about this vital substance and how, as humans, we relate to it. Chapters focus on creative explorations and explorations of creativity in relation to developing these understandings, including concepts such as hydrocitizenship and responses to drought and flooding. Drawing on the in-depth research and experience of arts practitioners including participatory artists, as well as academics from a variety of fields including geography, anthropology, health studies and environmental humanities, the book provides a rich and multidisciplinary perspective on water and creative ways of engaging and understanding human–water relationships. It represents a valuable source and inspiration for academics, arts practitioners and those involved in environmental policy and governance.

In this rare peak into the personal life of the author of numerous bestselling novels, gain an understanding of David Foster Wallace and how he became the man that he was. Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in This is Water. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.

Centuries from now, in a post-climate change dying boreal forest of what used to be northern Canada, Kyo, a young acolyte called to service in the Exodus, discovers a diary that may provide her with the answers to her yearning for Earth's past--to the Age of Water, when the "Water Twins" destroyed humanity in hatred--events that have plagued her nightly in dreams. Looking for answers to this holocaust--and disturbed by her macabre longing for connection to the Water Twins--Kyo is led to the diary of a limnologist from the time just prior to the destruction. This gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto in the grips of severe water scarcity during a time when China owns the USA and the USA owns Canada. The diary spans a twenty-year period in the mid-twenty-first century of 33-year-old Lynna, a single mother who works in Toronto for CanadaCorp, an international utility that controls everything about water, and who witnesses disturbing events that she doesn't realize will soon lead to humanity's demise. A Diary in the Age of Water follows the climate-induced journey of Earth and humanity through four generations of women, each with a unique relationship to water. The novel explores identify and our concept of what is "normal"--as a nation and an individual--in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing.

What Happens When One of America’s Most Admired Biographers Writes His Own Biography? For Eric Metaxas, the answer is Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Life—a poetic and sometimes hilarious memoir of his early years, in which the Queens-born son of Greek and German immigrants struggles to make sense of a world in which he never quite seems to fit. Renowned for his biographies of William Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther, Metaxas is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, the witty host of the acclaimed Socrates in the City conversation series, and a nationally syndicated radio personality. But here he reveals a personal story few have heard, taking us from his mostly happy childhood—and riotous triumphs at Yale—to the nightmare of drifting toward a dark abyss of meaninglessness from which he barely escapes. Along the way he introduces us to an unforgettable troupe of picaresque characters who join this quintessentially first-generation American boy in what is both bildungsroman and odyssey—and which underscores just how funny, serious, happy, sad, and ultimately meaningful life can be.