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Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World
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About This Book
"This book about rivers is as fascinating as it's beautifully written."---Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; and UpheavalA "fascinating, eye-opening, sometimes alarming, and ultimately inspiring" natural history of rivers and their complex and ancient relationship with human civilization (Elizabeth Kolbert). Rivers, more than any road, technology, or political leader, have shaped the course of human civilization. They have opened frontiers, founded cities, settled borders, and fed billions. They promote life, forge peace, grant power, and can capriciously destroy everything in their path. Even today, rivers remain a powerful global force -- one that is more critical than ever to our future.In Rivers of Power, geographer Laurence C. Smith explores the timeless yet vastly underappreciated relationship between rivers and civilization as we know it. Rivers are of course important in many practical ways (water supply, transportation, sanitation). But the full breadth of their profound influence on the way we live is less obvious. Rivers define and transcend international borders, forcing cooperation between nations. Huge volumes of river water are used to produce energy, raw commodities, and food. Wars, politics, and demography are transformed by their devastating floods. The territorial claims of nations, their cultural and economic ties to each other, and the migrations and histories of their peoples trace back to rivers, river valleys, and the topographic divides they carve upon the world. Beautifully told and expansive in scope, Rivers of Power reveals how and why rivers have so profoundly influenced our civilization, and examines the importance this vast, arterial power holds for our present, past, and future.
Reviews
"The mechanics of how rivers push all that soil downstream are so complex that the young Albert Einstein reportedly threw up his hands and turned to astronomy."
"This engagingly panoramic and truly global discussion of the connection between rivers and human civilization meanders, yet serves as an important reminder of our dependence upon the planet's arteries of fresh water ..."
"I could quite easily have managed a little more on the geography of rivers and how they vary."
"In trying to tell us everything about rivers, Smith deviates into areas of history, politics and business where his evident scientific expertise is of little use ..."
"Their value is often not evident to us except in the biggest of pictures, which is why the current generations of humans continue to dam them, fill them with pollutants and plastic bottles, and otherwise mistreat them ..."
"This enthusiastic, occasionally gushing, author opens his hymn to hydrology ancient and modern with a descent into a 9th-century Nilometer, a great pit ..."
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