| 9781608190034 |
| (alk. |
| paper) |
| 160819003X |
Available:*
Library | Material Type | Call Number | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... East Library | Book | 553.7 F151E | Nonfiction | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Elixir spans five millennia, from ancient Mesopotamia to the parched present of the Sun Belt. As Brian Fagan shows, every human society has been shaped by its relationship toour most essential resource. Fagan's 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. He sets out three ages of water: In the first age, lasting thousands of years, water was scarce or at best unpredictable-so precious that it became sacred in almost every culture.
By the time of the Industrial Revolution, human ingenuity had made water flow even in the most arid landscapes.This was the second age: water was no longer a mystical force to be worshipped and husbanded, but a commodity to be exploited. The American desert glittered with swimming pools- with little regard for sustainability. Today, we are entering a third age of water: As the earth's population approaches nine billion and ancient aquifers run dry,we will have to learn once again to show humility, even reverence, for this vital liquid. To solve the water crises of the future, we may need to adapt the water ethos of our ancestors.
Author Notes
Brian Fagan was born in England and spent several years doing
fieldwork in Africa. He is emeritus professor of anthropology at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of
Cro-Magnon , the New York
Times bestseller The Great
Warming , and many other books, including Fish on
Friday: Feasting, Fasting and the Discovery of the New World
and several books on climate history,
including The Little Ice Age and The Long
Summer .
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Five thousand years of rising and falling civilizations flow through Fagan's sweeping survey of man's ability to harness water. From the stirrings of agricultural settlements in the Euphrates Valley to the canny manipulation that sent the Owens River's flow to a tiny California town called Los Angeles at the start of the 20th century, Fagan (The Great Warming), an archeologist, digs down into our relationship to water sources, pointing out that "water is capricious and powerful, far more masterful than the humans and animals that depend on it." However, this survey veers unevenly, offering vivid descriptions of the hazards of channeling water in prehistoric northern Iraq, of water distribution in traditional Balinese governance structures, of Middle Eastern irrigation engineering that becomes mired in measurements and dimensions. Fagan prompts an appreciation of water's centrality to civilization and of human ingenuity, but his topic is so broad and his treatment so dry that his conclusion-a call for a profound realignment of an increasingly urban world with its dwindling water supplies-lacks the impact it deserves. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Fagan, author of a suite of titles on climate history (The Little Ice Age, 2001), here surveys water management, alighting on every continent and chronologically spanning from the advent of irrigated agriculture to the water works of modern cities like Phoenix, Arizona. He critiques the common impression that centralized control of water, such as that which conjured Phoenix into existence or, in ancient times, Roman aqueducts and Chinese canals, is the main theme in the story of humanity's capture and distribution of water. He favors a bottom-up view, suggesting that local solutions to water problems were consolidated by civilizations, not invented by them. He describes village-scale technologies to support that viewpoint, going into archaeological analysis to underscore how communities such as Bali, the Maya, and Angkor Wat invested their water sources with sacredness. Well might they have ritualized water, for Fagan recounts how science indicts drought as the agent of various civilizations' downfalls and a forewarning of our own. Supplying intriguing historical background, Fagan well informs those pondering freshwater's role in contemporary environmental problems.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
As its subtitle indicates, this book is "a history of water and humankind." However, prolific author Fagan (emer., anthropology, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) does not try to construct a linear narrative as in Steven Solomon's Water (CH, Sep'10, 48-0426). Elixir is a series of vignettes in which Fagan colorfully describes how various cultures worldwide managed their water resources. He draws mainly on archaeological evidence, showcasing an impressive variety of ways in which water was efficiently collected and distributed using little more than gravity. He does this for early societies and a few recent ones, stressing his view that local groups initiated the diversion of rivers for irrigation rather than engineering projects coordinated by centralized bureaucracies. Most chapters focus on water in one particular ancient culture such as Sumerian, Roman, or Harappan; water uses in older Islamic and recent Western cultures are also briefly outlined. Fagan highlights the sustainability of ancient water use but rarely has good things to say about today's practices. He does not explain how practices suitable for thousands or even millions of people could be adapted to serve billions instead, so in some ways this book comes across as a wistful look backward. Summing Up: Recommended. All undergraduate students and general readers. B. M. Simonson Oberlin College
Library Journal Review
Fagan (emeritus, anthropology, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; The Great Warming) traces humankind's relationship to water through history. He delves beyond water's life-sustaining properties to explore humans' ritualistic connection to water and the necessity of controlling water in both drought and flood-prone areas. The focus is on technology, ranging from simple furrows to more elaborate aqueducts, and on the correlation between the success of these water--controlling techniques and the civilizations associated with them. Fagan proposes three stages in the evolution of our relationship to water. In the remote past, access to water was unreliable; water was often scarce and therefore sacred. From about 2000 years ago through the Industrial Revolution, water was viewed as a commodity to be exploited. The current era views water as a finite resource that needs to be managed accordingly. VERDICT Recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the history of humans' relationship to water and for science buffs.--Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Science Lib., Athens (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xi |
| Author's Note | p. xxix |
| Part I Canals, Furrows, and Rice Paddies | |
| 1 The Elixir of Life | p. 3 |
| 2 Farmers and Furrows | p. 21 |
| 3 ôWhoever Has a Channel Has a Wife" | p. 39 |
| 4 Hohokam: "Something That Is All Gone" | p. 55 |
| 5 The Power of the Waters | p. 77 |
| Part II Waters from Afar | |
| 6 Landscapes of Enlil | p. 99 |
| 7 The Lands of Enki | p. 116 |
| 8 "I Caused a Canal to Be Cut" | p. 134 |
| 9 The Waters of Zeus | p. 153 |
| 10 Aquae Romae | p. 176 |
| Part III Cisterns and Monsoons | |
| 11 Waters That Purify | p. 201 |
| 12 China's Sorrow | p. 222 |
| Part IV Ancient American Hydrologists | |
| 13 The Water Lily Lords | p. 247 |
| 14 Triumphs of Gravity | p. 267 |
| Part V Gravity and Beyond | |
| 15 The Waters of Islam | p. 291 |
| 16 "Lifting Power... More Certain than That of a Hundred Men" | p. 310 |
| 17 Mastery? | p. 330 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 349 |
| Notes | p. 351 |
| Index | p. 371 |
