Keenan's Book Reviews: Search results for Georgia

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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

More than 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. Australia has suffered a decade-long, continent-wide drought. Even seemingly water rich places, like Atlanta, Georgia, can’t get enough water. Many are talking of a global water crisis. Except, as Charles Fishman aptly states it in The Big Thirst, “There is no global water crisis, there are a thousand water crises, each distinct.”

I think the story of Atlanta and Lake Lanier, as told recounted by Fishman, is especially instructive. Lake Lanier on the Chatahoochee River is the source of 75 percent of the water used by Atlanta, 5 million gallons a day. A drought in 2007-2008 brought the level of the lake dangerously low, prompting downstream states to sue over the amount of water Atlanta was taking. The federal court declared that Atlanta had been illegally receiving water from the lake and had to find another source. Atlanta has a lot of resources, barely tapped conservation efforts, reuse, and alternative supplies, but with a lack of political will, leadership, and vision, it leaders threw up their hands in impotent defiance of the court and whined they must have Lake Lanier water. When the lake was built, Atlanta passed on paying for a piece of it thinking it would never be needed, and now they think they can’t live without it.

Part of the point Fishman makes it that water crises are more often than not political crises. There is a lack of political will and sense of necessity, even though the problems can be plain and the solutions within reach. The Big Thirst includes examples from around the world (the United States, India, and especially Australia) where people are facing water problems. Happily, many of them have taken a more realistic and reasonable approach than Atlanta.

Fishman is going for something deeper, though. Our political and economic stumbling in the area of water management stems for our cultural relationship with water. It is obviously necessary for life. We also consider it beautiful, it is part of our landscape, and in some places it has important religious significance. Even so, we have difficulty understanding the value of water, comparing one use to another, assigning responsibility for its distribution and quality, acknowledging the infrastructure needed to have water when and where it is needed. It the West, where for the last century we have enjoyed incredible access to abundant water, we hardly ever think about water unless we have some professional connection to it.

We can’t continue to be mindless of water. The systems of water abundance we built in the last century aren’t sustainable without major ongoing investment. In light of climate change, they may be altogether unsustainable. Even without climate change, much of our water policy dates to a time of unusual water abundance.

Fishman encourages water mindfulness. We need to reconnect to water. In part, this reconnecting means understanding what it means to have water in our homes and in our streams. It is also connecting to how critical water is to food, energy, commerce, health, and almost every aspect of life. Our decisions about water need to be rooted in reality.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Blue Revolution by Cynthia Barnett

Elixir by Brian Fagan

Water by Marq de Villiers

Water by Steven Solomon

When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

I’ve also written about Atlanta and Lake Lanier at Infrastructure Watch:

Courts Could Affect Uses of Lake Lanier

Georgia Appeals Lake Lanier Decision

Georgia Loses Lake Lanier Battle

Judge Winnows Down Central Question in Lake Lanier Case

Fishman, Charles. The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. New York: Free Press, 2011.

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Friday, December 21, 2012

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

On February 5, 1946, The Adventures of Superman radio program opened with a new introduction:

Yes, it’s Superman. Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities farbeyond those of mortal men. Superman, defender of law and order, champion of equal rights, valiant, courageous fighter against the forces of hate and prejudice!

This announced the beginning of the radio Superman’s struggle with post-war social issues, especially a campaign against racial and religious intolerance. In this adventure, Jimmy Olsen infiltrated the Guardians of America, a fictional stand-in for pro-Nazi groups that were operating in the United States at the time. This was only the beginning. Later that year, Adventures would feature a 16-episode story in which Superman took on the Clan of the Fiery Cross, a stand-in for the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Behind these fictional stories of Superman were real-life adventures. The KKK was attempting to launch a new national membership drive, playing on the insecurities people felt after World War II. There were real infiltrators of the KKK and other organized hatemongers who exposed the workings of these organizations in the media. Rick Bowers tells the story of these men and the producers of the comic book and radio Superman in Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan.

Superman had been dealing with cultural concerns from his beginning. When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jewish high-school students in Cleveland, created Superman in the 1930s, they pitted him against criminal gangs and crooked politicians. As Nazi Germany began to rise as an aggressive European power, the hero opposed Nazis at home and abroad. During the war, he protected the home front. Though it is not the focus, Bowers describes how Superman has changes with the concerns of the times.

The Klan has roots going back to the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. It started as a jokey order of former Confederate Army officers in Tennessee who imitated the mystery religion-inspired fraternal orders that were popular at colleges, with mysterious rituals and strange names. It spawned imitators that secretly gathered in Nashville to organize themselves in 1867. Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first Grand Wizard, who lead the Klan in opposition to Reconstruction, including domestic terrorism against blacks and white proponents of racial equality and Reconstruction policies. The violence of the Klan members, called Ghouls, eroded the organization’s popularity.

William J. Simmons launched a campaign to revive the Klan, taking it national in 1920. For Simmons it was largely a moneymaking scheme, though he seemed happy to promote intolerance of blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants and anyone else who wasn’t a white, male Protestant. (I’m a white, male Protestant and I find nothing in Protestantism, or Christianity in general, that justifies the intolerance promoted by the Klan.) Successors led the Klan to political activism in the 1920s, and it became very powerful, but front-line violence and leadership hypocrisy undermined their position. The post-war membership campaign, led by Samuel Green who was Grand Dragon of the Georgia Realm, was thwarted by law enforcement and equal rights advocates with help of medial like Adventures.

The library helpfully labeled Bowers’ book with a sticker that reads, “TEEN.” I suppose it is a young adult book, though I think it is within the grasp of many middle school students. It is an unusual introduction to the history of bigotry in American and the movements that promoted equality, but the tie to a popular superhero might make the subject more appealing to kids in school. It made me pick up the book, and I’m far passed my school days.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Bowers, Rick. Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2012.

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