Amazon.com description: Product Description: Water is a thought-provoking, eloquent look at the importance of this vital resource to humankind, encompassing ecological, historical, and cultural perspectives. Marq de Villiers reports from hot spots as diverse as China, Las Vegas, and the Middle East, where swelling populations and unchecked development have stressed fresh water supplies nearly beyond remedy. Political struggles for control of water rage around the globe and threaten to erupt into military conflicts that will decide the fates of governments and nations. Rampant pollution poses an equally dire ecological threat - every year Canadians dump seven times more used motor oil into our waterways than the EXXON VALDEZ spilled in Alaska. With one eye to these looming crises and the other to the history of our utter dependence on this, our planet's most precious commodity, de Villiers has crafted a powerful narrative about the lifeblood of civilizations, the global consequences of human thirst, and solutions that may avert the coming water wars. Informative, insightful, and entertaining, de Villiers's work will be the standard book on global water issues for years to come, and it deserves to be read by everyone who has ever turned on a tap.