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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Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

For those looking for a brief survey of technological history around the world, Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey would be a good start. With just a little preface to introduce ideas about how civilizations interact in relation to technology, Pacey dives into a historical narrative of the development of major technologies. He starts in A.D. 700 and continues almost to the time the book was published in 1990.

Throughout the book, Pacey describes the interactions between civilizations as a dialogue. Straightforward, direct transfer of technology from one civilization to another is rare in his view. The success and development of a technology that originated in a foreign culture depends a lot on the customs, organization, government, economy, and technology of the receiving culture. Very often, the adoption of a foreign technology spurs adaptions, improvements and even new inventions among the adopters. Even the rumor of a foreign technology can spur people invent, or independently reinvent, solutions to a problem. Pacey is keen to recognize this stimulus effect in cross-cultural dialogue related to technology.

In addition to recognizing the inventiveness found in many cultures, Pacey is careful not to overemphasize mechanical inventions, which might tend to put the focus on the West. He points out that the development of more efficient and productive crops and agricultural practices in Asia were also important technologies.

Another important technological improvement centered on organization and abstraction. As technologies became larger and more complex, they exhausted what could be experienced directly by craftsmen. Improvement depended on developing new ways of thinking about materials and work. Scale drawing and model-making became a way to deal with complex construction. New principles of organization were applied to work, such as specialization and division of labor, especially as people began to work with powered machinery. Some technological improvements even required a new way of understanding materials, spurring interest in the development of sciences, especially chemistry.

Pacey follows this progression through guns and railroads and into the 20^th century with computers, nuclear power, and flights to the moon. He doesn’t stop there. Instead, he takes a look, seemingly “back,” to survival technologies. Technologies related to agriculture, sanitation and environmental health in the 20^th century have a huge impact on the way we live today. In the decades since this book was published, the Internet has revolutionized the way we think about computing and communications, but in many ways our health, wellbeing and lifestyles depend on technologies that are centuries old and we cannot neglect them. Perhaps in an ongoing cross-cultural dialogue about technology, new and old, we can find solutions to current and future problems (climate change, water shortages, clean energy, food security and more) that are adaptable to the various needs, scales and organizations of cultures around the world.

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

Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

Pacey, Arnold. Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990.

The Boom by Russell Gold

The great expansion of natural gas wells that was brought about by new technologies—directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking)—in the last few decades has meant that a lot more people are physically closer to the energy industry. In 2013, more than 15 million Americans lived within a mile of a fracked well. Journalist Russell Gold has a personal connection to this change in the energy landscape; his parents own property in Pennsylvania that they leased out for natural gas drilling.

In his book, The Boom, Gold explores the history of the oil and gas industry, and the development of key technologies, that led to the present abundance of natural gas. This interesting and long history energy exploration and development has attracted colorful characters.

The natural gas boom has also created opportunities and challenges. For one thing, fracked wells can produce a lot more natural gas and get it from rock formations that were previously considered too impermeable to economically give up the gas they stored. Now we get gas from these rocks and the natural gas supply that once seemed limited now seems enourmous, and prices for natural gas have dropped in response.

In addition, natural gas produces less carbon dioxide and other pollutants than burning of other fuels such as coal. Even though the U.S. has not participated in international carbon-control protocols, the growth of natural gas as a fuel, replacing other energy sources, has made the U.S. one of the few countries to come close to meeting goals for carbon reduction.

Even so, natural gas is a fossil fuel that carries some of the problems of its cousins. For instance, natural gas is mostly methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. Releases of methane reduce some of the gains made by switching from coal or other less clean-burning fuels to gas. Cheap gas also makes alternative energy sources such as solar or wind less economically attractive, which may delay the development of these resources.

Gold seems to balance these issues. Natural gas is a superior fuel to coal from the perspective of air quality and climate change. It is probably also necessary to use natural gas as a bridge to solar and wind as a way to provide stability as these naturally variable energy sources, along with the energy storage needed to make them truly feasible, are improved. Other problems with gas, such as potential threats to water quality, can be mitigated with existing technology, better rules and careful management.

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

Contents Under Pressure by Sylvia F. Munson

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Gold, Russell. The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

King James Bible Celebrates 400th Anniversary

The King James Bible was first published 400 years ago, in 1611, after four years of translation by the best Greek and Hebrew scholars in Britain. The King James Bible went on to have a great influence on the English language (much like Shakespeare, who was writing his plays at about the same time). It was the official Bible of the English church and became a popular translation throughout the English-speaking world, especially in America.



I grew up hearing the King James Bible, with some mid-18th Century revisions, read in church. It was the Bible I read when I first began to study it for myself (I usually read the New King James Version now). I think its influence on my speech and thought can still be heard from me, just like the remnants of my Bootheel accent.

The King James Bible can be tough reading. The language has changed in the last 400 years. Because it was officially a revision of an earlier translation, it was a bit stodgy, formal and dated even for its time. Mostly, it was considered an incredible, accessible, beautiful and even poetic translation in its time. Even the modern ear can detect the carefulness and cleverness of the language, the sense of rhythm, mood, and storytelling. The scholars who produced this translation wanted it to be both faithful to the original language and great writing in English. It was to be read from in the churches across England, so they wanted to sound good.

In addition to enjoying the Bible, I’ve had the pleasure of reading some histories that cover the translation of the Bible into English, especially the King James Bible. Here is a selection.

Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired by Benson Bobrick

Benson Bobrick tells two related stories side by side. One is the history of the translation of the Bible into English, culminating with the King James Bible. The second is how the concept of religious liberty, greatly tied into Bible translation, fueled thought on personal and political liberty, leading to reforms in the English government and the formation of American political thought.

Certain people serve as pins on which Bobrick hangs his narrative: John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, and King James I. Tyndale prepared an influential translation of the Bible with the support and protection of a group of English wool merchants with ties to European Lutherans. The protection was not complete and Tyndale was executed after being convicted of heresy in the Netherlands for espousing Protestant views. When England became officially Protestant under Henry VIII, Coverdale translated and published English Bibles with official approval. Coverdale’s work, and the legal sanctions for it, prepared the way for the Authorized Bible that would take form in the reign of James I.



In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture by Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath lays the groundwork for his history of the King James Bible in the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press. He then presents the history related to the King James Bible itself. Like Bobrick, McGrath wraps up with the influence of this translation, though he focuses more on language and culture than politics.



God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson

Nicolson focuses more specifically on the King James Bible and the men who prepared it than the other authors previously discussed. His choice to write less about what came before and after the King James Bible gave him room to write more about the translators, their work, personalities, and place in the spectrum of the English Reformation.



Majestie: The King Behind the King James Bible by Teems, David

This biography of King James includes several chapters on the translation he authorized. Its also provides interesting background on the man and the political and cultural climate of the times. A 17th century boy-king was not a very pleasant thing to be, and James’ journey to adulthood and monarchal power was full of danger. Teems’ style is less formal than some of the other authors on this subject.

Feeding the Fire by Mark E. Eberhart

Mankind is hungry for energy. The United States is a huge consumer of energy, and our lifestyle depends on it. This makes us, and other developed countries, vulnerable. The burning of fossil fuels is leading to a changing climate that could have many negative ramifications. Our dependence on foreign sources of fuel, especially oil, have embroiled us in wars oversees and made us uncomfortable allies with nations that do not share our values.

Chemistry professor Mark E. Eberhart suggests that we need a good energy diet. Unfortunately, after spending a couple of chapters of Feeding the Fire setting up the idea, he ends up having only a little to say about an energy diet in the final chapter of the book.

In between, however, he tells an interesting history of energy from the big bang to our age. He also provides a primer in thermodynamics aimed at an audience that hasn’t studied science or engineering. If the book had purported to be about that, I’d probably be speaking about it in glowing terms. If you’re looking for a book that explains energy and how it works that is written for an audience with little scientific background, this is a good option.

Though most of the book concerns itself with the dispersal of energy through the universe and the development of technology, the energy diet is mainly a matter of policy. The central element of Eberhart’s vision is an “energy-industrial complex” modeled on the way the U.S. military works with industry on the long-term development, delivery and reliability of technology. U.S. energy policy is so disjointed that in practice we have no policy, but with imagination and discipline (and arguably the setting aside of partisanship for matters of national security that transcend it) we could develop a comprehensive policy that gets our efforts moving toward a more secure, efficient and cleaner future. It doesn’t even need to be a perfect policy, just a commitment to take specific actions and set specific standards to make things better over time.

Eberhart has some specific recommendations, especially related to the development of electric vehicles and supporting technolgies. In the 12 years since Feeding the Fire was published, we’ve made some headway on many of them. This is in spite of the fact that we still do not have a comprehensive energy policy.

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

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

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

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

The Computers of Star Trek by Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Eberhart, Mark E. Feeding the Fire: The Lost History and Uncertain Future of Mankind’s Energy Addiction. New York: Harmony Books, 2007.

What's New May 12, 2010

America has Huge Need for Water Infrastructure Improvements
Bill Watch—111th Congress (Updated)
Climate Change Legislation
Follow Your Heart by Andrew Matthews
Genesis
Glossary (Updated)
Interesting Stuff May 12, 2010
Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender
National Infrastructure Bank Proposals Keep Coming
New Member Appointed Missouri Dam & Reservoir Safety Council
Recovery Act and Infrastructure News
What's New April 7, 2010
Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Life's Matrix by Philip Ball

Water is a chemical essential to human life and culture, and it is possibly the oddest common substance. Physicist and science writer Philip Ball describes the nature of water, both scientific and cultural, in Life’s Matrix (originally published in the United Kingdom as H2O: A Biography of Water).

Ball begins at the very beginning—the big bang. Hydrogen, the simplest atom and most abundant element in the universe, appeared early in the universe. Oxygen is forged in stars and has become the third most abundant element. There is water in space. Ice seems to be common in the far reaches of the solar system. It has been found on the moon and stars and a few molecules appear in the cooler spots on the sun.

We have found no worlds yet that have as much liquid water as ours. The water cycle has shaped Earth. Our weather comes largely from the interplay of water and energy. Even the water locked up in the ice of our poles and glaciers shape the land, influence the weather, and affect the movement of heat, water and salt in ocean currents.

Ball tackles all phases of water, including a few exotic forms that only occur in extreme conditions created in laboratories. That water exists as vapor, liquid, and solid within the fairly narrow range of temperatures that are common on Earth make it unique. This is just one of its unusual properties. The structure of the water molecule is described in the book along with the physics that explain its behavior, to the degree that such things are even known.

Our understanding of water as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen is a relatively recent thing. For a long time, water was thought of as an irreducible element. This makes sense on some level. Water is essential to life as we know it. It is irreplaceable. From the perspective of living creatures, and in almost every culture, water is a fundamental material.

In the final chapter, Ball moves away from the hard sciences to culture, economics and policy. Water of the quality needed for drinking, and even the lesser quality needed for other things, is scarce and unevenly distributed on the planet. To take a serious look at water is to be drawn to issues of health and wealth. Growing population and changing climate will put increased demands on the available fresh water, and we need to consider how we are going to manage it. Ball takes a look at some of the hot spots.

The book is intended for a broad audience. I think it is probably more accessible to someone with some education in the sciences, especially chemistry or physics, but someone had a high-school level class in these subjects they should be able to follow along.

In addition, the book is 16 years old, so necessarily out of date in some respects. I suspect that much of the physics, chemistry and biology described is still sound. Similarly, there is unlikely to be discoveries in history that would seriously outdate the book, even in the interesting section on dead ends and “pathology” in water science.

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

The Big Necessity by Rose George

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

Blue Revolution by Cynthia Barnett

Canals and Their Architecture by Robert Harris

Elixir by Brian Fagan

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

Water by Marq de Villiers

Water by Steven Solomon

When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

Ball, Philip. Life’s Matrix: A Biography of Water. 1999. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis

I wrote this for a class in public administration back in 1997. You can tell it’s for a class because it’s longer than the reviews I’d normally write for this blog. I have the sense from reading it that the assignment must have involve answering particular questions about the book. I got an A-. The hyperlinks are added, but I haven’t changed it otherwise from what I wrote the first time.
Bennis, Warren. On Becoming a Leader. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994.

Bennis’ premise is that leadership comes out of the state of being of the leader. Leadership starts with a leader’s capacity for self-invention, to shape himself with learning and reflection as opposed to being shaped by circumstances. In Bennis’ words, “No leader sets out to be a leader. People set out to live their lives, expressing themselves fully. When that expression is of value, they become leaders.”

Bennis’ process of self-invention begins with self-knowledge. He proposes four lessons to gaining self-knowledge. First, “you are your own best teacher”; learning is essential. Second is to accept responsibility for your own education. Third, “you can learn anything you want to learn.” Finally, reflection is necessary to develop understanding and a leader must question his experience to learn. Leaders innovate and learn from experience without fear of mistakes. According to Bennis’ definition, a leader is someone in the front, doing things others have not done.

A leader must add knowledge of the world to self-knowledge. Bennis says that a leader should learn about the world through participation rather than reaction. One learns by trying to change something as well as experiencing it as it is. The conscious learner seeks broad experience, learns from others and from mistakes.

A leader must trust his instincts. Bennis uses Emerson’s term “blessed impulse.” Blessed impulse is a tool for making decisions in a world to complex to be completely understood.

Leaders must deploy themselves. By this Bennis means a leader must practice self-expression. Deploying oneself is offset against being deployed by others or the voices of others on one’s head.

Leaders must “get people on their side.” Bennis prescribes constancy, congruity of words and action, reliability and integrity.

Bennis also speaks more generally about the characteristics and roles of leaders. These are similar to what might be found in other books on leadership.


Bennis calls the organization the primary form in American society. He challenges leaders to shape their organizations, and shape society, to make them work in a rapidly changing world. He encourages executives to empower junior leaders in their organizations to teach them leadership through experience.

Throughout, Bennis uses the experience of twelve leaders gleaned from interviews. Bennis includes a brief biography of each leader at the end.

At first, it seems that Bennis says that one becomes a leader by being a leader. This is what he says, but he does not leave the reader hanging. Bennis’ perspective is what is unique about the book. Leadership is the expression of the character, qualities, values and personality of a leader. His is not a direct call for us to become leaders, but for us to become ourselves. Leadership will follow.

This may be a difficult lesson. Buyers of books on leadership are probably more interested in learning the skills of leadership and management to help them in their current situations. Bennis says express yourself. If you are doing what you think you ought to do, if others deploy you, you will not be a leader. Self-expression may take you to something different.

The first step to leadership is self-knowledge. A useful tool is self-evaluation, what Bennis calls “tests and measures.” Bennis offers a set of four tests—really four statements. One could apply the tests with pencil and paper, making lists in response to each statement. Of all the tools and suggestions in the book, this set of tests is the most clear and immediately applicable. A reader wanting to apply Bennis’ lessons would do well to start here.

Little else can be used immediately. Changes in point of view and lifestyle take time. One might argue that only a few Bennis’ suggested activities are specific to developing leadership. To me, much of it sounds fun and interesting. That is the point Bennis is trying to make: leadership comes out of broad experience, education, perspective, desire, mastery of one’s discipline and synthesis of ideas.

My own experience validates this. I am as proud of my single published poem as I am of my accomplishments as an engineer or public servant. The skills and abilities exercised by writing are different from those exercised by engineering. I am persuaded that, though seemingly unrelated, one improves the other in me.

Bennis’ somewhat artificial distinction between managers and leaders is a shortcoming. He makes a manager sound like something one would not want to be. He list skills and characteristics developed from the “education” of a leader and the “training” of a manager. All seemingly undesirable things are on the manager side. On might argue tat several management skills, like deduction and common sense, would be useful to a leader.

Most of the interviews are businessmen, but some come from public service agencies and professions. In may seem that businessmen are more susceptible to “surrendering to the context”—the bottom line, the corporate culture, the style of a boss to be pleased—but public service leaders must face their own context. A public servant may readily accept his organization’s view of the way things should be or done, what is important and who to involve without ever considering his own vision, ability and desire.

It may be more important for public section leadership to use self-expression. While a business leader may have the satisfaction of bringing a product to market, making a profit, even gaining notoriety, a public leader may never see his vision achieved. A public leaders’ satisfaction may have to come from living the life he wants to live.

A particular item addressed by Bennis that may be of use to one in public service is getting people on your side. A public leader may have little to rely on besides his integrity and “voice”—an ability to change the climate of his organization and shape it to work more effectively. As important as it is, Bennis can offer little on the subject except constancy, congruity, reliability and integrity. He says to be someone others might follow. He offers no lessons on persuasion, though if persuasion can be taught, it may be of little benefit to those who lake those characteristics.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Tested by Time by James L. Garlow
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Developing the Leader Within by John C. Maxwell
The Difference Maker by John C. Maxwell
Winning with People by John C. Maxwell