Written in Water: Messages of Hope for Earth's Most Precious Resource

This varied collection of 25 essays by leading conservationists, edited by documentarian Salina, range from a warning by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Frank Clifford about the ten-year drought threatening 30 million residents of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Denver, to stories of successful activists like Marion Stoddart, who stopped the industrial pollution of Massachusetts's Nashua River. A photographic study of Mount Everest shows graphic evidence of receding glaciers; several pieces describe traditional methods of ""rainwater-harvesting and storage"" being implemented in locations like Nepal; Rose George discusses the reasons behind the staggering statistic that 2.6 billion people worldwide live without sanitation, ""surrounded by human excrement,"" which causes 25 percent of global child deaths. The book's central message, that ""water conservation is not about scarcity"" but rather its careful use and fair distribution, comes through in a number of sober but optimistic calls to action.