Fresh Water For All - Grand Challenge

As a life-giving but also potentially destructive substance, water occupies a prominent place in the imagination. At the same time, water issues are among the most troubling ecological and social concerns of our time. Water is often studied only as a "resource," a quantifiable and instrumentalized substance. Thinking with Water instead invites readers to consider how water - with its potent symbolic power, its familiarity, and its unique physical and chemical properties - is a lively collaborator in our ways of knowing and acting. What emerges is both a rich opportunity to encourage more thoughtful environmental engagement and a challenge to common oppositions between nature and culture. Drawing from a pool of contributors with diverse backgrounds, Thinking with Water presents the work of critics, scholars, artists, and poets in an invitation to pay more attention to the aqueous aspects of our lives.

In Water and African American Memory, Anissa Wardi offers the first sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. Her holistic approach especially highlights the ways that water acts not only as a metaphorical site of trauma, memory, and healing but also as a material site. Using the trans-Atlantic voyage as a starting point and ending with a discussion of Hurricane Katrina, this pioneering ecocritical study delves deeply into the environmental dimension of African American writing.

This beautifully illustrated book explains how water influences our culture; the many phases of water from ice to gas, its simple but still so unpredictable nature, and water resources on Earth; how water is distributed in ice, oceans, rivers, lakes and more; how it creates transport possibilities; how it produces and absorbs energy; how it is constantly changing the surface of the Earth; how there is enough water on Earth, yet sometimes there is too much or too little; the role of water in recreation; and how water supplies us with food in a myriad of ways. Though it belongs to all of us, it is still not shared by all. This book offers an insightful and intriguing read for anyone interested in science and culture related to water, from laymen to students and decision-makers.­­­­­­­­