First Kings

First Kings is a history of the kings of Israel and Judah beginning with the transition for David to his son Solomon.  The book also recounts some of the notable prophets of the time, particularly Elijah and Elisha.

Solomon was David’s contested successor.  David had many sons older than Solomon, though some were dead, notably Absalom who had tried to usurp the throne.  David’s son Adonijah was preparing to succeed his father, and even organized an elaborate celebration to court the favor of important aristocrats.  The prophet Nathan discovered the plot.  He, Solomon, David, and Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, arranged to elevate Solomon to the throne while his father still lived.

Solomon was notable for his wisdom.  God offered to the young king what he wanted.  He asked for wisdom to govern the people rightly.  God was pleased with the answer and gave Solomon wealth and power in addition to wisdom.

Wisdom didn’t keep Solomon out of trouble.  He had many wives (no doubt trouble by itself), and he permitted his foreign wives to continue practicing their religions, so the worship of false gods was allowed in the kingdom.  Idol-worship would be common amongst Solomon’s successors.

After Solomon, the kingdom was divided.  The ten northern tribes formed a kingdom generally referred to as Israel.  Two southern tribes made Judah.  Throughout this period, idol-worship prevailed in Israel.  Some kings of Judah served God, but many did not, and the godly kings did not succeed in eradicating idolatry.

Following Solomon, most of the kings of both the north and the south are summed up briefly.   Some just get a paragraph.  We see the kingdom rise and fall based on the faithfulness of the people.  When they sought God, even imperfectly, He blessed them and they thrived.  When they sought to gratify themselves and follow false gods, they quickly ran into trouble.  This is a pattern in the history of ancient Israel that started before the kings and continued after them.

First Kings ends with the reign of Ahab, famously married to Jezebel.    These monarchs promoted the worship of Baal and suppressed the worship of God.  They were opposed by the prophet Elijah.  Elijah is associated with some spectacular miracles.  God withheld rain from the land until Elijah called an end to the drought.  Elijah called out the prophets of Baal in a contest to call down fire from heaven  Baal did not answer his worshippers, but God sent fire for Elijah, who that day executed hundreds of Baal’s priests.  This put him in serious conflict with Ahab and Jezebel.

Elijah is also well known in that he did not die, at least not in a conventional sense.  He was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire.  He appeared to Christ and a few disciples on during the Transfiguration.

It is clear that First Kings is intended to be a summary.  It frequently refers to records of the actions of the kings as if these might be available to a reader who wanted to confirm the recounting of find more information.

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

First and Second Samuel

Luke

Mark

Matthew

Proverbs

First Kings.  The Holy Bible.  New King James Version.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

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Water by Steven Solomon (204)

Solomon, Steven. Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. New York: Harper, 2010.
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Steven Solomon’s Water is an epic history of civilization from its roots to modern time. Solomon’s thesis is that inventively mastered their water resources have risen and those that have outpaced their available water or innovations have declined. There are lessons in this history for us who live in an age where some nations already experience serious water scarcity and even relatively water rich nations are squandering their natural fortune.

The book generally follows sequences of technology, geography, and politics. In technology, it moves through waters many uses from irrigation to transportation, energy and sanitation. The geographic motion of the book is from east to west, starting the early innovations of Asia, sliding to Europe, then jumping the Atlantic to North America. The political trend begins with ancient, totalitarian hydraulic societies and moves on to gradually democratizing nations and the splintered, competitive, yet surprisingly workable and cooperative, market-oriented Western republics.

In the final chapters of the book, Solomon deals with the threat of water scarcity. Some parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Asia, are already facing water shortages. Those fortunate enough to have other sources of wealth, like oil, are importing virtual water, especially in the form of food. Control of water resources is becoming a matter of international diplomacy, national security, and possible war in much the way oil was in the last century. This is especially true in the arid, populous Middle East and South Asia. Many of the water poor live in lands that are highly populated, arid, unstable politically, and have long-standing enmities with neighboring countries.

Relatively water rich nations, like the United States, have problems, too. Much of it stems from using water inefficiently and for less productive activities. This is especially problematic in the dry western states, where long-standing, vested interests have sought to protect their subsidized access to water while others, sometimes more efficient and high value users, pay great premiums for the limited remaining available water. This isn’t strictly a western problem; eastern cities are also droughts, growing populations, industrialization, intensive agriculture, and aging infrastructure that strain their water resources.

While the problems are serious, Solomon seems hopeful that, as in the past, we may be able to develop technological, organizational, and political solutions to these issues. He objectively discusses national and international efforts to solve the looming water crisis. He seems to have more faith that workable solutions well arise in the more water rich, democratic West, where a combination of government regulation, free markets, substantial local control, and varied regional solutions are giving rise to innovation.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Ancient Engineers by L. Sprague de Camp
Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris
Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury
Exodus
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
The Great Stink by Clare Clark
Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark
Water by Marq de Villiers
When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

Song of Solomon

What is an erotic poem doing in the middle of the Bible? The Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, is a beautiful poem, but some find it hard to reconcile with the more solemn books on either side of it (in most editions, it is between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah).

The poem celebrates the courtship, marriage and continuing union of a couple.  This couple is the King, referred to as the Beloved (Solomon), and the Shulamite, one of his favorite wives. In much of the poem, the Beloved and the Shulamite express their love for each other and the delight they experience in being loved by each other.

Though it is masked in metaphor, there is clearly physical attraction and pleasure in the relationship. The Shulamite compares her husband to a feast, and she is deeply satisfied (maybe pleasantly drunk) from enjoying him. The Beloved compares his wife to a beautiful garden, and he wants to smell every flower and taste every fruit.

Some have taken the entire book to be a metaphor for something else. It has been read at Passover by Jews, who see it as a reference to the God (the King) initiation relationship (marriage) to Israel (the humble and lowly Shulamite). Christian scholars have often taken it as a metaphor of the relationship between Christ and the church, which is often referred to as the bride of Christ in the New Testament.

These ideas no doubt have merit, but I would not want to lose the more straightforward story of the song. Marriage can be full of passion and pleasure. A committed couple can find ways to make that passion last and continue to enjoy each other. God created marriage, and I think He wants husbands and wives to enjoy each other in many way, including sex.

The poem has multiple narrators and take place in multiple settings. In addition to the Beloved and the Shulamite, we here from the ladies of the court, the Shulamites’ brothers, and other possible guests of a wedding feast or similar event. The original text does not readily identify shifts in speaker or setting except through internal clues, such as changes in pronouns. Many editions of the Bible including notes or headers to make understanding the poem easier, but these are the addition of editors.

Song of Solomon. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Second Chronicles

Second Chronicle continues the history of Israel from First Chronicles (originally they were one book). It covers a period of almost four centuries, beginning with the reign of Solomon and ending as the Babylonian captivity started.

The chronicles are books of comparisons and contrasts. There was something alike about all the periods when the kings of Israel were successful and the people thrived. Likewise, periods of defeat and loss all shared a common element. These thriving and dying periods similarly were unlike in a key way.

The key factor was the faithfulness of the king, and the people, to God. When the kings sought God and the people worshipped Him, he blessed them and caused to rise in wealth and power.  When the king and people sought their own ways, especially to worship the idols and practice the sins of neighboring kingdoms, God let them fall into the hands of their enemies. Eventually, Israel was completely taken over by Babylon.

This pattern could play out even if the reign of a single king. Some hard-hearted kings would start well but stray from God and lead the people away with him. Some evil kings responded to God’s call of repentance and reconciliation, and their turnaround could bring the whole kingdom back to God.

One could argue that the kingdom was at its peak during the reign of Solomon. He built the temple, he reigned in peace, and he stored up great wealth for himself and his kingdom. In spite of his wisdom, he strayed, too. Though he never abandoned the worship of God, he suffered for his sins, suffering he brought onto himself.

Even so, Solomon was the model of a good king. His reign takes up more pages than others in the book. A lot happened during that time, especially the building of the temple. The temple was the symbol of God’s presence with the nation of Israel, and His blessing is central to the prosperity of the nation, so it makes sense that His temple received a lot of attention.

Other notable kings include Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah. These leaders were associated with revivals, the destruction of idols, the restoration of worshipping God, and generally successful reigns. As an engineer, I take special note of Hezekiah, who was famous for building a reservoir and underground aqueduct to supply water to Jerusalem.

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

First Chronicles

First Kings

Second Kings

Second Chronicles. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Ecclesiastes

Solomon’s reflections on his life, Ecclesiastes, are surprisingly dark.  We might be surprised that such an accomplished, wealthy, and famous man might experience such emptiness and disappointment.

After all, his list of achievements is long. He built the temple to God his father, David, had longed to build. He had incredible wisdom that brought him widespread fame. His reign was a time of unusual peace when foreign nations paid tribute to Israel. He had the opportunity and means to indulge every pleasure, curiosity and whim.

When he measure this against the scale of eternity, he found all these accomplishments, all the things he learned, built and experienced, to be worthless. “Vanity” is the word you’ll find repeated in most translations. The wealth amassed over a lifetime passes on to others. Great structures crumble; if they last centuries, their builders are forgotten. Pleasures are fleeting. We all die, and what we do isn’t worth much. Solomon is frank about his disappointment and frustration, “All is vanity.”

How can someone live in such a world? God made the world, and His creation is not devoid of good. In the later chapters of the book, Solomon encourages people to fear God, do their best, and enjoy the simple pleasures of life. He looks around and finds people who eat and drink, enjoy their families, and work hard at something productive. He sees that it is good. It may not last, but it is still good, and people should enjoy life.

Between the lamentations of the early chapters and the conclusion, there is a collection of proverbs. Wisdom is valuable. A wise person will do more good, enjoy more and better pleasure, and avoid a lot of pain.

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

First Chronicles

Second Chronicles

First Kings

Proverbs

Psalms

Ecclesiastes. The Holy Bible. New King James Verson. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

The Writings

The Writings is a collection of poetic and wisdom books. These books are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. In Christian Bibles, these Old Testament texts are typically placed between the historical books and the prophets. These books are organized a little differently in the Hebrew Bible, where they are grouped with other books that some considered to be of similar vintage (the Ketuvim).

Poetry is a link to all these books. Job and Song of Solomon are both long poems. Psalms is a collection of songs, but these lyrics can be read as poems and follow poetic forms used in the other books. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes also use poetic forms; the contrasting or comparing couplet in particular is used in much of Proverbs.

These books also deal with subjects that can be difficult. Job suffers incredible loss, and has long debates about sin and suffering with friends who are supposedly there to comfort him. Many psalms are songs of praise and thanksgiving to God, but in some the psalmist, especially when it is David, freely expresses grief, anger, disappointment and fear. The wisdom literature collected in Proverbs sometimes shrugs its shoulders hopelessly at folly, and Ecclesiastes takes a very dark view of life. Song of Solomon deals frankly with passion and physical love in marriage, possibly to the point of eroticism.

These books address tough issues, but they do not offer easy answers. Sometimes the best they can offer is trust God. Trust God is good advice. Even so, we often would like to hear something else. We’d rather have an answer, or find strength in ourselves or our communities, or be assured that we can reason it all out on our own. We’d rather do almost anything instead of trust God.

Because of this, these books can be tough going for both the faithful and nonbelievers. I encourage Christians to read these books. Come prepared with an understanding of the more straightforward parts of the Bible. You’re going to wrestle with challenges in your life, and you’re not always going to have easy answers, or answers you can even understand. Wrestling with these books, prayerfully and faithfully, can help you prepare to deal with the strange difficulties of real life, where prayer and faith seem to be all you have and even that doesn’t seem to be enough.

You may find these books troubling, especially if you are a new Christian and you’re still seeking answers and encouragement to help you live your new life. You may find yourself asking, “Why would God including this in His Word? Why would he bring up these issues and say things about the I cannot fathom?” I don’t know. Trust God.

First Chronicles

First Chronicles is a history of Israel beginning at the beginning of creation and running through the transfer of power from David to Solomon. The first roughly half of the book is a series of genealogies, showing the descent from Adam to the various tribes of Israel. The end of Saul’s reign, and his thwarted dynasty, are treated briefly. The rest of the book is devoted to the reign of David.

The treatment of David’s reign is much different in this history than it is in Second Samuel. First Chronicles focuses on David’s service to God, especially in relation to the Ark of the Covenant and the temple.

David recovered the Ark and eventually moved it to Jerusalem and restored it to the Tabernacle. Considering how important the Ark and the tabernacle were to Israel in the time of Moses and Joshua, when the people became a nation, recovering it must have had a great impact on the minds of Israelites as they transitioned from a nation to a kingdom.

I think one can see a connection between the reestablishment of regular worship under the Mosaic system and the establishment of David’s reign. God makes a covenant with David that a descendant of David will build a temple to God and reign forever.  This promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

David’s devotion to God was sincere. His motivation to build the temple came from a desire to serve and glorify God. Even though he was instructed not to build a temple, this task was reserved from Solomon, he prepared for it by gathering materials for its construction and decoration. David envisioned a beautiful and richly appointed temple.

If there is a theme to tie together the various parts of the book, I think it is the hand of God in the establishment of the kingdom of Israel, especially David’s family dynasty. It didn’t start with David, though, or even Moses. It started with Adam. From the beginning, God planned to set aside a people for Himself, to serve and worship Him and to enjoy Him and His blessings. In God’s covenant with David, we can even see the continuity of this plan through the church.

First Chronicles is not an easy book to read. There is a lot of genealogy. This abundance of family history and the various divisions of Israel can give one a sense of piece-by-piece building of a kingdom, though it may have as easily been for ensuring a correct inheritance to the various people the land God gave them.

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

Exodus

First Samuel

Genesis

Second Samuel

First Chronicles. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Proverbs

Proverbs. The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings. Most are attributed to Solomon. A couple of chapters are attributed to Agur and Lemuel’s mother.



Though related proverbs are loosely grouped together, the book overall can seen disjointed. This is the partly the nature of a collection of sayings.

With the exception of a few longer, poetic sections, each proverb is a short saying, usually just a couple of lines. Often, the second line is a comparison or contrast to the first. A typical proverb may express essentially the same idea in two ways, or it may present opposite behaviors with their different results.

These sayings are intentionally short and often poetic because they are intended to be easy to remember. They are teaching tools.

What the proverbs teach are ethics. They encourage good behavior, righteousness, integrity, good character and wisdom. They discourage evil, injustice, deceit, bad character and foolishness.

The proverbs are founded on a religious understanding of the world. God exists and he has a plan for His creation. The world is a created order and understanding this order can lead to better decisions. God is just and ultimately sets everything right, even if it appears in the short-term that evil is rewarded and good has no effect.

Even though the proverbs have this religious outlook, they are not idealistic. Wisdom may begin with acknowledging God and His character, but it includes recognizing that our world is full of evil and corruption. Pitfalls abound with sexual immorality, strong drink, deceitful people, and corruption in business and government.

Living righteously in a corrupt world is not easy, and sometimes the advice on how to deal with evil and foolishness seems to conflict. While it is straightforward enough that we should never do what is evil, sometimes the proverbs advise to confront and sometime they advise to let things be. Sometimes the wisest thing is to turn tail and run.

This isn’t so much a matter of conflicting advice as recognition that wisdom isn’t a cookie-cutter approach to life. We learn wisdom over time as we mature. People are different and we learn to tailor our responses to them for the best effect. In addition, the wisest people are always learning, always seeking appropriate counsel, and always turning to God because they recognize they don’t know it all, haven’t seen it all and are far from perfect.

The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley

In 1905, then Secretary of War William Taft and a host of other American dignitaries took a tour of Pacific islands and Asian nations. James Bradley tells the story of this trip, along with the wider contest of President Theodore Roosevelt’s policies toward Pacific expansion and Asia, in The Imperial Cruise.

Roosevelt, with Taft as his right hand, engaged in secret diplomacy with Japan. The Senate would not have approved a treaty with Japan with terms Roosevelt wanted, and his own State Department would have strongly advised against his course. So Roosevelt sent Taft to consummate a secret deal that he could never acknowledge.

By the time Taft set sail, Japan was already responding to interactions with the West. It was remaking itself into an industrialized, militarized country in the western mold. Roosevelt saw in them American-friendly, quasi-civilized people who could expand Anglo-Saxon virtues into Asia without slipping out from under Anglo-American influence. As with almost everything related to the Pacific and Asian peoples, Roosevelt was very shortsighted.

In reading about the early 20^th Century, I’ve been struck by the pervasiveness of racism. Bradley explains how Roosevelt viewed everything through a racial lens. These were racial lenses were proudly worn by white elites at the time. The key to history was racial history. They saw the birth of civilization in the Middle East with the Aryans, who began moving west. Around the Mediterranean, where the Aryans mixed with other races, civilizations degenerated. In Germany, pure Aryans gave rise to Teutons, who inherited Aryan civilizing with values of democracy and individualism. These Teutons moved west and were further perfected in the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxon civilization leapt across the Atlantic and push aside the savages of North America. To Roosevelt, Manifest Destiny had not closed with the conquering of the continent; it was ready to spread into the Pacific. White men would continue to spread their civilizing influence, subjugating or exterminating lesser, browner races when necessary as white Americans had done to their Indian wards. White elites like Roosevelt saw their westward destiny in this racial history, and it was further confirm by science in Darwinian survival of the fittest.

History and science refute such notions now. Bradley (and I) certainly don’t try to justify the attitudes or actions of Roosevelt, Taft or others. Bradley is plainly critical of handling of Pacific islands and Asia. Roosevelt’s racial views blinded him to the abilities and patriotism of non-whites. He had the hubris to pursue diplomacy on his own, secretly, without advice from the State Department, Senate or anyone else who might raise the slightest objection or concern. He tutored Japan in the ways of western imperialism, but could not imagine how well they would learn the lessons. Bradley places at least some of the blame for World War II in the Pacific at the feet of Roosevelt, whose interventions created the powerful military empire we faced in those waters.

Roosevelt was an astute manager of his image and he understood public relations. Because of this, he sent his oldest (and nearly estranged) daughter Alice on the trip. She was a celebrity, and her presence assured a lot of press coverage. Her presence was also a distraction from Taft’s secret mission.

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

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

First Samuel

Life is So Good by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose

Water by Steven Solomon

Bradley, James. The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009.

Psalms

Psalms is a collection of songs. Many of the songs are attributed to the poet and king David. Others are attributed to Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon and even Moses. Many are anonymous.

The songs were meant to be sung, and sometimes they contain annotations suggesting a certain style, tune or instruments. I find that sometimes the structure or words of a psalm suggest that it was probably intended for a soloist, a chorus, or a call and response.

Many of the psalms, especially those attributed to David, deal with the faithfulness of God and the blessed life of those who trust Him. Other psalms suggest that David encouraged, and probably enjoyed, corporate singing of praise to God. David is particularly honest in his prayer-like psalms, and is not afraid to express his anger, disappointment and fear. Even in these moments, he is grateful for God’s mercy.

Several psalms have a messianic message, foreseeing and describing Christ before His coming. Jesus even suggests that these psalms refer to Him, along with other Old Testament scripture (see Luke 24:44).

Other songs were written for, or have become associated with, certain ceremonies. The Hallel psalms (113-118) are sung as part of the Passover celebration. The Songs of Ascent (120-134) are associated with pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

You will find there is a psalm that resonates with almost any emotion, mood or experience. Though the music of these songs is lost to most of us, they still invite us to explore our thoughts and experience, reflect, pray, and connect to a God who cares, who’s mercy is at hand. Even the structure of much of this Hebrew poetry, in which ideas are repeated, compare and contrasted, invites one into meditation.

Psalms. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Why Good Things Happen to Good People by Stephen Post and Jill Neimark

Post, Stephen, and Jill Neimark. Why Good Things Happen to Good People: The Exciting New Research that Proves the Link Between Doing Good and Living a Longer, Happier, Healthier Life. New York: Broadway Books, 2007.

Solomon wrote, “The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will be watered” (Proverbs 11:25 NKJV). According to bioethicist Stephen Post and writer Jill Neimark, this ancient wisdom is true and backed up by modern science.



Throughout the book, they site numerous studies of showing that giving benefits the giver with better physical and mental health and longer life. The effects can be both immediate, such as the release of feel-good chemicals in the brain when we do good, and long-term, such as longer life and better health in old age.

The book is only partly a summary of the research on the benefits of giving. It is catalog of types of giving. In each area, it provides a test to evaluate one’s giving and suggestion on how to be a giver. The authors seek to reach from the research to its application in how people can be better givers and reap the benefits of it.

An interesting aspect of the book is the areas of giving. Some are expected. Generativity, compassion and listening are types of giving that will quickly spring to the minds of many. Some may be unexpected. Courage, humor and creativity are less obvious ways of giving, but the authors show how we can enrich the lives of others through them and be better off, too.

A chapter that particularly caught my attention dealt with the way of celebration, or gratitude. I’ve long thought that our appreciation for the good in our lives is essential to our happiness. The research sited in this book confirms that gratitude makes happier and calmer. It also helps us heal and have relationships with others. The authors offer some very good advice on how to increase gratitude, just as they show ways to increase in the other forms of giving.

Rising Tide by James M. Barry

The Mississippi River is powerful. I’ve seen it. I grew up in the northern tip of the river’s delta and now live near one of its major tributaries. John M. Barry’s history of the 1927 flood of the Mississippi, Rising Tide, is only partly about the power of the river. It is more about the power of men, particularly the political power of the men who have tried to exert control over the river.

The first political battle related to the river took place in the 19^th Century. It was a conflict between the nation’s military engineering establishment and their increasingly influential civilian counterparts over who would control Mississippi River policy. The principal actors and figureheads for the two sides were Andrew A. Humphreys, chief of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, and James B. Eads, St. Louis-based civil engineer. The Corp largely won this battle, maintaining a controlling voice in river policy, but the resulting agency, the Mississippi River Commission, adopted a theory of practice that neither Humphreys or Eads supported. It would lead to floods on the river becoming increasingly bad.

That conflict doesn’t completely disappear, but it is overtaken by the greater flow of money, politics, society, and race, mostly centered in New Orleans, Mississippi’s Yazoo Valley, and Washington, DC. It is hard to give each player his due in a brief review of Barry’s book. Barry focuses on Leroy Percy, who had great influence on river policy before, during and after the flood. He was a planter in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta and, briefly, a U.S. Senator from Mississippi. He was also a relative of Walker Percy, one of my favorite authors.

The flood made political careers and had lasting effects. President Calvin Coolidge appointed his Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, to lead relief efforts after the flood. The publicity and public goodwill that accrued to Hoover during this period helped to usher him into the White House as Coolidge’s successor. Hoover’s lack of follow-through on promises to black leaders created a crack between in the relationship between African-American’s and the Republican Party that led to a serious split.

Huey P. Long also owed some of his success to the flood and its aftermath. New Orleans business leaders promised to provide relief to neighbors who would be flooded by the dynamiting of levees to protect the city. Afterward, these men did everything they could to minimize their liability and did not even pay one-tenth of the cost of damages caused by the flooding. Long rode a wave of resentment against New Orleans aristocrats into the Louisiana governor’s office. Once there, he used his position to strip the New Orleans elite of as much power as he could. As the city elites became more insular and focused on protecting what they had, rather than growing their businesses and community, New Orleans lost its position as the leading city of the South as other more welcoming cities grew.

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

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

Blue Revolution by Cynthia Barnett

Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris

Elixir by Brian Fagan

Life's Matrix by Philip Ball

Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

Water by Marq de Villiers

Water by Steven Solomon

When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

Barry, James M. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Blue Revolution by Cynthia Barnett

Barnett, Cynthia.  Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2011.

America has a problem.  We’re a thirsty nation.  Actually, it’s more like we’re addicted to water, abusing it.  We subsidize its use on a grand scale in industries that use it inefficiently, even wastefully, and in locations where it is naturally hard to come by.  We allocate it based on facts that are no longer true, and were doubtful or changing even as we made our policies.  In our sometimes blind enthusiasm, we overreached and now we are mire in unintended consequences.  To top it off, we rarely change our ways until a crisis is already upon us.

Cynthia Barnett describes these problems in her book Blue Revolution.  She also looks around the country and the world for solutions.  Her essential solution is a water ethic.

At one time, people were intimately connected to water.  Farmers watched for rain.  Children fetched pails of it from the stream or worked a pump handle.  Communities were built around watermills where people brought in grain or carried away flour. 

Of course, water is no less essential to modern life.  We depend on it for drinking, cleaning, sanitation and green lawns.  It is essential or the energy that light and cools our homes and powers our computers.  The abundance of food in our groceries stores is partly a testament to the abundance of water used to irrigate fields that don’t get enough rainfall for the crops we grow.

What is different is the way we view water.  For most of us it is cheap, nearly free in comparison to other utilities and services we use in our homes.   We can get as much as we want whenever we want by opening a valve.  Water is something we hold back with dams, divert with canals, and pump through pipes.  It bends to our will—except when it doesn’t.

Our water policies and technologies have often had unintended consequences.  We turned deserts into productive fields, but much of the water is lost to evaporation.  We moved water great distances to supply cities, but it encouraged profligacy that threatens those distant, expensive supplies.  Dams that were engineering marvels may soon stand at the ends of empty lakes.

Sure, changes in technology and policy are needed to stop, and hopefully reverse, these problems.  Barnett doesn’t stop there.  Our approach to water arises from the way we value it, think about it, and relate to it.  Our present state came from valuing water little, thinking about it little unless it was our job, and relating to it little except for those who intensely depended on a highly subsidized supply.

The water ethic Barnett proposes would value water, both in the sense of personal appreciation and economic cost and opportunity.  It would seek the best use of the water we have, especially what is locally available.  It creates opportunities for people to contact water and understand where it comes from and how it is affected by use.  It is something that spreads organically from person to person, neighborhood to neighborhood, business to business, and city to city.

It is an ethic that is within reach, too.  Barnett describes how places that have long had extreme relationships with extreme water environments, like the Netherlands, Singapore and Australia, have changed their relationship with water.  These are not just policy shifts, they are cultural changes.  Even in the United States, there are places where a new water ethic is taking hold and people understand how important and fragile water is.

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

Elixir by Brian Fagan

Water by Marq de Villiers

Water by Steven Solomon

When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

Google

Top Books I Read in 2011

It’s been my custom on KBR to pick the top 20 percent of the books I read every year. Here are the best of what I read in 2011.

1. Romans
2. Second Corinthians
3. The Pentateuch
4. Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller
5. The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark
6. Water by Steven Solomon

You may also be interested in
Best of What I Read in 2010

Best of What I Read in 2009

Best of What I Read in 2008

Best of What I Read in 2007

Top 15 Books of the First 200 Reviewed on KBR

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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250 Books Reviewed on Keenan’s Book Reviews

Since starting this blog, I've posted reviews of 250 books.  The most recent 50 are listed below in alphabetical order and their are links at the bottom of this post for a continuation of the list of all 250 books.

First Time Reviews

12 “Christian” Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy by Henry Cloud & John Townsend

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

Attitude in a Nutshell by Sam Glen

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

The Big Con by David W. Maurer

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Colossians

Deal with It! by Paula White

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

Deuteronomy

Eat That Cookie! by Liz Jazwiec

Elixir by Brian Fagan

Ephesians

First Corinthians

First Samuel

First Thessalonians

Galatians

It’s Not About Me by Max Lucado

Joshua

Judges

Just Say Thanks! by R. T. Kendall

Just Write by Walter Dean Myers

Life is So Good by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman

Katy Depot Historic Site edited by Deborah Biermann

Majestie by David Teems

Make Miracles in Forty Days by Melody Beattie

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

Pastoral Letters

The Peter Principle by Laurence J. Peter & Raymond Hull

Power in Praise by Merlin R. Carothers

On the Mainlines by William B. Claycomb

The Pentateuch

Pulp Art by Robert Lesser

The Revenge of Kali-Ra by K. K. Beck

Revved! by Harry Paul and Ross Reck

Ruth

Scholastic’s A+ Guide to Book Reports by Louise Colligan

Second Corinthians

Second Thessalonians

Second Timothy

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Stop Whining, Start Living by Laura Schlessinger

Titus

The Velveteen Principles by Toni Raiten-D’Antonio

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Water by Steven Solomon

Additional and Expanded Reviews

Majestie by David Teems

Continuation of list of 250 books reviewed

First 25 Reviews

Reviews 26-50

Reviews 51-75

Reviews 76-100

Reviews 101-150

Reviews 151-200