The Big Thirst

The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water

By: Charles Fishman

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

The water coming out of your tap is four billion years old and might have been slurped by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. We will always have exactly as much water on Earth as we have ever had. Water cannot be destroyed, and it can always be made clean enough for drinking again. In fact, water can be made so clean that it actually becomes toxic. As Charles Fishman brings vibrantly to life in this delightful narrative excursion, water runs our world in a host of awe-inspiring ways, which is both the promise and the peril of our unexplored connections to it.

Taking listeners from the wet moons of Saturn to the water-obsessed hotels of Las Vegas, and from a rice farm in the Australian outback to a glimpse into giant vats of soup at Campbell's largest factory, he reveals that our relationship to water is conflicted and irrational, neglected and mismanaged. Whether we will face a water scarcity crisis has little to do with water and everything to do with how we think about water - how we use it, connect with it, and understand it.

Portraying and explaining both the dangers - in 2008, Atlanta came just 90 days from running completely out of drinking water - and the opportunities, such as advances in rainwater harvesting and businesses that are making huge breakthroughs in water productivity, The Big Thirst will forever change the way we think about water, our crucial relationship to it, and the creativity we can bring to ensuring we always have plenty of it.

©2011 Charles Fishman (P)2011 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A timely warning about the dwindling global water supply." ( Kirkus)

Possibly the best book I have bought this year.

What made the experience of listening to The Big Thirst the most enjoyable?

Truly fascinating and not too linear.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Big Thirst?

The story of the Australian city Toowoomba and how it is possible that even in the 21st century otherwise sane and well educated people can simply ignore science and logic.

Have you listened to any of Stephen Hoye’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Would not say extreme,however,I would rate it as the best book I have bought this year.This is the first time I have taken the time to review a book,which says allot as I average about 2 books per month on audible.

Any additional comments?

It was nice to get more than I expected from this book.

Nice and Fun Listen

This book details many issues surrounded by water. Interesting and covers a variety of topics!

Your tap water is fine, really!

Books about environmental and economic issues are always kind of depressing, because it's really easy to show examples of how very badly we are hoisting ourselves on our own petard on an epic scale. Like most authors of such books, Charles Fishman shows us how very, very bad it's getting and then tries to end on an optimistic note: "Hey, we have the technology and the science, and if we just behave like rational adults who know we're all in this together, we can solve this problem!"

Uh huh, how often does that happen?

Some interesting points to ponder:

1. The Earth will never "run out" of water. The Earth has exactly the same amount of water today that it did a billion years ago and will have in a billion years. It doesn't go away, it doesn't get destroyed, it just gets recycled.

2. Every drop of water you drink was once dinosaur pee. Probably millions of times over.

3. It's been shown repeatedly that people given access to relatively unlimited, cheap water use less water than people whose water supply is sporadic and uncertain, because people who can't count on their water supply tend to horde water, which leads to more wastage.

4. There are potentially oceans-full of "deep water" locked in the Earth's crust, miles down. Unfortunately, no technology currently known to us would make it possible to access it.

There are a lot of other interesting not-so-random facts in this book. But "The Big Thirst" is about water, and water management, and the economics of water. Basically, we have too many people and not enough water. Except that's not precisely true- we have enough water. We just don't distribute it or manage it wisely. Fishman talks about the extraordinary growth of water technology in the 20th century - how something we now take for granted (in the U.S.), that when you turn on the tap, safe, unlimited, practically free drinking water will come out, is a tectonic shift in culture. People used to have to spend hours every day just to haul enough water to live on. About half the world still does (and this burden mostly falls on women, with many long-term secondary consequences).

Fishman examines three main "case studies" - Las Vegas, Australia, and India. Las Vegas, of course, is a city built in the middle of a desert where people come and pay hundreds of dollars a night to sleep in hotel rooms overlooking enormous water fountains. Vegas's water supply from Lake Mead has been getting sparser and sparser. In response, they have made a number of very intelligent water choices and imposed restrictions that would seem insane in much of the U.S., yet Vegas residents have shown it's perfectly possible to live comfortably under a water-conservation regime. And yet, they still irrigate luxury golf courses in a desert. And yet, they still use (and waste) less water than farmers.

Australia is also suffering from years and years of drought, which does not look to be ending any time soon unless you believe the global warming denialists. One of Australia's major crops is rice. Yes, Australians raise rice - a very water-intensive crop - in the desert. Seems like madness, but it made perfect sense when rain was plentiful and rivers were flowing. Now there are rivers that have literally dried up, and if you do believe in climate change, then they are probably not coming back in our lifetimes. There is a certain futility in the attitude of the rice farmers whose "solution" is basically to hope the rains come again.

There's also an interesting story about a town that could have solved its water shortage problems easily by using waste-water - very clean and efficient sewage treatment plants - except the residents went nuts at the idea of drinking "sewer water" (even though, see above, every drop of water you drink has been urine many, many times for millions of years). More and more cities are in fact now using waste-water and desalinization to provide much of their water. (Desalinization, unfortunately, is not a magical process that turns seawater into drinking water with merely an investment in a plant. It has a massive energy cost - in other words, it's likely to increase global warming — and all that salt you extract has to go somewhere.)

Then there is India. Where even rich people tend to have erratic public water and supply themselves through inefficient, wasteful, technically illegal jury-rigged supply lines filled by private water trucks. Where millions of girls basically can't go to school because they are too busy fetching water for their families. (And because they have no toilets at school that any human being would want to use.) India also has massive water problems, but ironically, they are worse now than they were in the 70s, because what was once a fairly workable public water system has been allowed to fall apart.

So, all these problems, which are in fact solvable, but they are solvable through a combination of technological, economic, and social means which will require people act like responsible adults on a global scale. Although Fishman makes the point several times that even if the residents of California suddenly implemented heroic water-saving measures, it wouldn't do a thing for the water needs of people in India or Australia.

We are really foolish about water, and water is going to become a more pressing problem than oil in the next fifty years in some parts of the world.

An interesting if somewhat gloomy book (unless you're a really optimistic futurist). I thought Fishman belabored some points a bit, and was a little too trusting in the magic of "the market" to solve our water problems if applied correctly, but the basic point that people don't value something they get for nothing has been born out.

Important, well-written book.

I found this book interesting to hear, well-written, well-researched, and very important to the survival of our civilizations.

Award Winning Information

When Al Gore released his movie, An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, it won an Academy Award for best documentary. Charles Fishman should win some kind of award in "The Big Thirst" because this could be another documentary that could overwhelm the screens. The Pulitzer Prize should give an award to Fishman in this category because this is the best informational book thus far.

Water is a natural resource that we need to survive no matter what is your economical status and no matter where you live. If you want to know everything about water, such as Las Vegas or how they meter water in different metropolis or not having 24 hour of service that people in America takes for granted, then, this will be your best book that you will ever read.

You don't have to be an environmentalist to be concern of water. I don't recycle, drive a gas guzzler, and like having more nuclear power plants, but I can't stand a drippy faucet or a running toilet.

Comprehensive overview of an important topic

Having read several books on this subject recently, in my opinion, this is among the best. It provides a very balanced view off water from many different perspectives and has armed me to think about one off the most important topic affecting our lives.

interesting, but long

Fascinating facts and stories about water, but at times the details became a little long.

A Great Read From Start to Finish

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a more than surface level analysis of water. How it shaped the past, how it’s shaping the future and it’s meaning in different countries around the world. The narrator was excellent!

Did not meet high expectations.

For many reasons, I had high expectations for this book: a trusted friend’s recommendation; the high Amazon/Audible ratings; and Fishman’s track record (the Wal-Mart Effect).

By no means is the book a dud, but it’s not profound either. Here are my main two beefs and then I’ll spend some time explaining what the book does well.

First, unnecessary repetition pervades the entire book. For example, the first chapter is dedicated almost entirely to describing how water is enmeshed in all aspects of our lives. It keeps going long after its point has been made. Even the repetition of the word “water” – repeated well over 100 times in the first chapter and appearing multiple times in nearly every paragraph – grated on me (at least listening to the audio). In later chapters, Fishman repeats this tendency, not just leaving no stone unturned, but turning the same stones over, again and again.

Second, while Chapter 1 tells us that there’s a “new era of water” coming, Fishman’s more nuanced thesis doesn’t start to crystalize until later in the book.

My advice, should you choose to read this book, is to start by listening to the last chapter first. There, Fishman makes clear that this book is not an alarmist book or doomsday prophecy. Instead, we learn that the book’s core message is this: when the externalities of water use are not priced into consumption, water consumers make poor, non-sustainable decisions. No surprise there. And, hearteningly, when there’s an economic incentive to manage water use such as for large consumers of water (e.g., computer chip manufacturers, large hotels), those large consumers make smart decisions that cut costs and save water resources. Fishman also provides cautionary examples where municipalities failed to undertake needed water innovation because of politics, inertia, and outdated expectations about water.

Finally, the narrator is one of my least favorites for reaons I can’t quite put my finger on.

Not an educational book.

Disclaimer: I listened only the first 60 minutes of this book.This review concerns only this first hour.

The first 20 minutes of this audiobooks is multiple iterations of the following: "No one ever thinks about their water. It comes from the tab and people don't understand how their lives are completely dependent on it. Their bodies are made of it. And yet no one ever appreciates how precious it is."

This over-extended intro is not very useful.

After the first 20 minutes the author gives one useful concept: "The water you drink has been around for the past 4 billion years. It's the same water that dinosaurs drank."
But Mr. Fishman does not expand on this eternal cycle. How much evaporation happens in a year? How much mixing is there between different layers of the ocean? He does not tell.

Soon the author starts laying out an agenda about how people are overusing water. He tells two stories about water shortages: one in Barcelona and another in a small town in US. The stories are interesting. However they do not help the reader understand the global water cycle.

I quit the book after the first 60 minutes. I felt the author hadn't said anything informative about water. I wanted answers to questions like
- How much water do people use around the globe?
- What do people use most water for?
- How much water is used in different economic activities: households, agriculture, industry? Why? Which industry is the most water intensive?
- What is the minimum water amount a person needs in order to survive? Why does the body need water? Why do plants need water?
- How is water processed to make it suitable for human consumption? What are the impurities and which processes reduce which pathogens?
- Where do communities usually take their water: rivers, lakes, groundwater, seawater?
- How many places make drinking water from seawater? How? How much energy does it require?
- How much of the global water reservoir is in oceans, lakes, rivers, clouds, ice?
- How much energy is generated with hydropower? How much does it vary from year to year?
- Where is the shortage of water most acute? Why? What kind of population density would be sustainable at those areas?


This is not necessarily a bad read; he did give two highly interesting stories about towns under distress. Such stories are very interesting and entertaining. But they are misleading without the proper context in my opinion.

I got annoyed with the prose very early and it probably distorts my perception. More babble-tolerant readers will learn a lot more than I.