Interested in increasing your knowledge of water issues in Washington and beyond? Look no further! CELP staff and members have compiled this list of resources just for you. If you find one or more intriguing, simply follow the links from this page to Powell's Books, and a portion of your purchase -- even of books not linked to from our site -- will directly benefit CELP at no extra cost to you. Have a favorite, or a personal review, that you'd like to add to our list? Please let us know!

Global Perspectives on Water | U.S. History of Water

Columbia River | Salmon | Personal Histories | Water Science

Global Perspectives on Water

Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
Marq De Villiers

"I can say that no book succeeds better than this one in making water issues accessible and engaging to a broad public." Sandra Postel, author of Last Oasis and Pillar of Sand

Whose Water Is It?: The Unquenchable Thirst of a Water-Hungry World
Bernadette Mcdonald

Less than one percent of the Earth's water is fresh water available for drinking, irrigation, and industry. By 2025, the UN expects more than half the world's population will lack sufficient water to cover basic needs. Since 1970 the water supply has declined by 33 percent. Mankind has always taken water for granted. For the first time, we must face a new reality: Not only is this precious resource not inexhaustible, it's already so scarce that great swaths of our planet are under serious threat. In this provocative and important book, 14 prominent environmental writers address every aspect of the looming crisis.

Water Wars
Diane Raines Ward

Every day, we hear alarming news about droughts, pollution, population growth, and climate change-which threaten to make water, even more than oil, the cause of war within our lifetime. Diane Raines Ward reaches beyond the headlines to illuminate our most vexing problems and tells the stories of those working to solve them: hydrologists, politicians, engineers, and everyday people. Based on ten years of research spanning five continents, Water Wars offers fresh insight into a subject to which our fate is inextricably bound.

Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit
Vandana Shiva
South End Press, 2002

In Water Wars, Vandana Shiva reveals how many of the most important conflicts of our time, most often camouflaged as ethnic wars or religious wars, such as the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are in fact conflicts over scarce but vital natural resources.

Shiva celebrates the spiritual and traditional role water has played in communities throughout history, and warns that water privatization threatens cultures and livelihoods worldwide. She calls for a movement to preserve water access for all, and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns like the one in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where citizens fought for and retained their water rights.

The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources
Peter H. Gleick
Island Press
(1998 - 1999 Report Pictured)

In his first installment of this biennial publication, Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development (an environmental research organization in Oakland, CA), detail[ed] a range of water issues: the growing danger to human health from inadequate or unsafe water; the international security risks associated with water scarcity; and the effects of climate change on water resources. He then discusse[d] international efforts to address these issues, developments in water law and policy, and his vision for the future. (Book News, Inc.)

Water, Culture, and Power: Local Struggles in a Global Context
John M. Donahue, Barbara Rose Johnston (Editors)
Island Press, 1998

Fifteen case studies examine the origins, anatomy, and sometimes resolution of water resource conflict in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Honduras, the Virgin Islands, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, and the Middle East. Issues discussed include the creation of demand-induced, supply- induced, and structural differentials in resource allocation; the political process of funding and building water resource projects; who gains or loses from those projects; and most importantly, the intersection between resource and culture as it relates to contested rights to use, constrain, and control water and contested perceptions and experiences of water scarcity. (Booknews)

Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity
Sandra Postel
WW Norton & Co., 1992

Postel, vice president for research of the Worldwatch Institute, examines the worldwide limits--ecological, economic, and political--of water, and discloses existing methods to make water go further, decreasing the likelihood of both scarcity and conflict. (Booknews)

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U.S. History of Water

Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water
Marc Reisner
Penguin Books, 1993
Reviewed by CELP Member Ian Bentryn

This is the classic, and very depressing, history of American greed and egotism applied to the "development" of water resources. If you care about free rivers and healthy wildlife, environmental travesties and pork-barrel boondoggles, or ethical treatment by our government of Native Americans and small farmers, this book will make you cry. Simply put, if you are a U.S. citizen and you eat food, this should be the next book you read.

The River Reader
Edited by John A. Murray
Lyons Press, 2003

The River Reader inaugurates a new series of nature anthologies in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, dedicated to bringing readers of the finest nature writing from the past and present. Each book will be devoted to a single environmental subject and composed of both classic selections and contemporary writings. In this first volume, we celebrate writings about rivers from twenty-two diverse writers including: John James Audubon, William Bartram, Rick Bass, Joseph Conrad, Annie Dillard, Ernest Hemingway, Meriwether Lewis, Barry Lopez, Harry Middleton, Kathleen Dean More, John Wesley Powell, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain. All share their visions of rivers throughout the world, from the raging Amazon to the mile-wide Mississippi.

River Horse
William Least Heat-Moon
Houghton Mifflin, 1999
Reviewed by CELP Member and Volunteer Extraordinaire Barbara Floyd

William Least Heat-Moon takes us on a fascinating river journey from New York Harbor to the Columbia River Bar in his River-Horse. We learn a bit of history, of local color, and of the challenge of river travel. But, most of all, we observe man's impact on the rivers. How industrialization (mining, logging, farming), development, and commercialization have triggered channelization, damming, pollution, flotsom and jetsom - all effecting river flow and quality. If you enjoy reading travel logs and seeing first hand the state of some of our nation's rivers, you will enjoy River-Horse.

Water: A Natural History
Alice Outwater
BasicBooks, 1996

A generation after the Clean Water Act was passed, one third of our waters are still polluted, according to the author, and only 6 percent of contamination is caused by industry. Environmental engineer Outwater, who managed scum and sludge removal in the Boston Harbor cleanup, reaches back into our history to chart the changes in our waters. She makes a strong case for restoring natural systems to public lands, repopulating beaver, bison and prairie dogs. This book is a valuable addition to environmental literature and to our understanding of water. (Publisher's Weekly)

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Paul Hawken & Amory and Hunter Lovins
Little, Brown and Co., 1999

A critique of the present economic system and its destructive effects on natural assets, coupled with ideas about how to make it work better. The Lovinses, directors of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a resource policy center, and business author Hawken (The Ecology of Commerce, 1993, etc.) merge their talents and experiences here to offer practical guidelines for reducing the environmental messes made by the industrial world, including pollution, transportation congestion, erosion, and wasted energy of all types. (Kirkus)

"[This book] is so informative and provocative--and so unfashionably optimistic about the future of the planet--that I wonder why everyone in public life is not reading it and arguing over the implications....NATURAL CAPITALISM poses an intelligent challenge to lazy assumptions on both sides of the political divide and ought to jump-start a reinvigorated environmental debate." (William Greider, Nation)

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
Wallace Stegner
Penguin, 1992 (reprint)
Reviewed by Ken Viste

Quintessential biography of John Wesley Powell, explorer and first charter of the canyonlands of the Colorado River, and ethnographer of their peoples. A dynamic leader and visionary for the American West whose recommendations for living within its environment have too long been ignored. "No library of western/southwestern materials can be without this book. . . ." (Books of the Southwest)

Overtapped Oasis: Reform or Revolution for Western Water
Marc Reisner & Sarah Bates; forward by Bruce Babbitt.
Island Press, 1990

From the author of Cadillac Desert, a discussion of Western water policy. "The authors contend that outmoded state laws, and a system of Federal entitlements that funnels water to farmers at prices substantially below market value ... breed waste and shortages. With fully three-quarters of Westerners living in urban areas, can the region afford to continue allowing 80 percent to 90 percent of its available water to go to agriculture, especially when it is used to irrigate pasturage and low-value crops like alfalfa? ... The authors assert that the equation should be balanced by making water subject to market forces. Allowing water to rise to its highest economic use, they say, would benefit the environment as well as cities." (NY Times Book Review)

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The Columbia River

Native River: The Columbia Remembered
William D Layman
Washington State University Press, 2002

In images and narratives, Native River recreates a vision of the mighty Columbia River as it appeared when it ran wild and free. Featuring a wealth of illustrations, maps, and photographs, many never before published, this finely crafted book focuses on the 350-mile reach of the middle Columbia River -- from Priest Rapids in south-central Washington to the U.S.-Canadian border. Layman gives us the unique opportunity of picturing the great river, and man's relationship to it, prior to the building of seven major dams that now harness the mid-Columbia's power and obscure its former features under reservoirs. Included are Native American legends and lore, the cryptic messages of ancient rock art, accounts of white explorers and immigrants, and Layman's own insightful observations. 

River of the West: The Story of the Columbia and Its People
Robert Clark
Picador USA, 1995

From glacial floods that began to shape the Columbia River twelve thousand years ago to its discovery, conquest, and colonization by the English, Spanish and Americans, the story of this river encompasses not only the full range of American history, but also a geography of myth, hope, and tragedy. Clark surveys the meaning and history of this great river running through the American imagination as well, while providing an unforgettable portrait of the people who lived an died on the Columbia's banks -- conquered native peoples, European adventurers, New England missionaries, emigrants from the drought-ridden Midwest, and dreamers seduced by hydropowered New Deal promises of peace and prosperity.

A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia
Blaine Harden
WW Norton and Company, 1997
Reviewed by CELP member Ian Bentryn

Tells the same sad story as Cadillac Desert except with the focus on our own Columbia River. Highlights how Northwesterners can learn to ignore the extinction of Salmon in exchange for cheap electricity and cheap food. Explains how the Rugged Individualists of the Columbia Basin have come to rationalize the federal welfare they receive so that their alfalfa-for-Japanese-cows farms can pretend to be profitable. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, this is the other next book you should read!***

Blaine Harden, who covered Africa and the Balkan war for The Washington Post, has written a hard-nosed, clear-eyed, tough-minded dispatch on the sort of contentious subject that is almost always distorted by ideology or obscured by a fog of sentiment. The result is a scathing indictment of technocratic hubris, and of those who play what Mr. Harden calls 'the river game' for shortsighted economic gain ... (The New York Times Book Review)

Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River
William Dietrich
Simon and Schuster, 1995

Washington's mighty Columbia River has been transformed in 60 years from an unruly river into a series of placid pools; it is the most heavily dammed river in the world, and the greatest producer of hydroelectricity. Dietrich, Pulitzer prize-winning science reporter for the Seattle Times, looks at the Columbia as a whole: its history, geology, biology, hydrology, economics, contemporary politics, and management. The report is disturbing and compelling. Wild salmon stocks have nearly disappeared; there are competing demands on the river for power, irrigation and fish. Dietrich charges that no single agency is in charge of measuring pollution or maintaining the health of the river. Conceding that dams are of undeniable benefit, producing energy, food, navigation and flood control, he notes that few would pass environmental and economic review today. This comprehensive survey of the Columbia ecosystem points out the social and environmental costs of engineering marvels. (Publisher's Weekly)

The Columbia: Sustaining a Modern Resource
Tim Palmer
Mountaineers, 1997

Flowing from seven states and one Canadian province and drawing on a hundred mountain ranges and a thousand tributaries, the Columbia River's watershed reveals not only the wealth of two nations but also the tragic losses in the wake of two centuries of human settlement. The Columbia celebrates this grand region, while offering an honest portrait of a resource crisis. The story told is vitally important for all who live in the Northwest and care about its great river. (The Mountaineers)

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Salmon

King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon
David R. Montgomery

The salmon that symbolize the Pacific Northwest's natural splendor are now threatened with extinction across much of their ancestral range. In studying the natural and human forces that shape the rivers and mountains of that region, geologist David Montgomery has learned to see the evolution and near-extinction of the salmon as a story of changing landscapes. Montgomery shows how a succession of historical experiences - first in the United Kingdom, then in New England, and now in the Pacific Northwest - repeat a disheartening story in which overfishing and sweeping changes to rivers and seas render the world inhospitable to salmon.

Sacrificing the Salmon: A Legal and Policy History of the Decline of Columbia Basin Salmon

Michael C. Blumm
BookWorld Publications, 2002

In this book, Professor Michael Blumm explains the role of the law in the decline of what were once the largest of the Pacific salmon runs, those of the Columbia Basin. The Columbia Basin is home to the largest interconnected hydroelectric power system in the world, considerable irrigation withdrawals, and extensive timber harvesting, grazing, and mining. All of these activities, along with substantial harvests in the ocean and the river, have adversely affected Columbia Basin salmon runs. Sacrificing the Salmon examines all of these issues in the complicated relationship of the law and the decline of Columbia Basin salmon, the first book to do so. Blumm is Professor of Law at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. He has written widely about the fate of Columbia Basin salmon since 1979 and teaches the only course in the country on Pacific Salmon Law.

Salmon without Rivers-A History of the Pacific Salmon Crisis
Jim Lichatowich
Island Press, 1999
Reviewed by CELP Members Bill & Patti Barmettler

This was a real eye-opener for me. I'm a layperson with no technical background to help understand the problems the salmon face. Mr. Lichatowich laid a good foundation by talking about the fossil record and describing the habitat niche each salmon species has carved out for itself. The rest of the book is devoted to the impacts brought about by Euro-American settlers. I had always thought of the salmon problems as being fairly recent in nature, but the book describes in detail the horrendous damage we'd inflicted before the turn of the 20th century. I'm sharing my copy with the citizens on our watershed planning unit, because I really think everyone could learn something. Hope I get it back!

Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species
Freeman House
Beacon Press, 1999
Reviewed by CELP Members Bill & Patti Barmettler

Recommended by Jacques White of People for Puget Sound. This was, broadly speaking, a story about a diverse group of people on a North California watershed who somehow banded together to help their native run of king salmon twenty years ago, long before it had become a fashionable thing to do. The author doesn't spend much time dredging up historical factoids like Mr. Lichatowski did in "Salmon Without Rivers". Instead, Mr. House wanders an introspective and somewhat mystical landscape. His chronicling of their fight to save the run is interwoven with his thoughts about our interconnectedness to the salmon and to the land in ways that we do not acknowledge and do not appreciate. I'm not predisposed towards elevating things beyond what we can see and touch, but by the time the book was read I found myself wondering if he wasn't on to something.

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Personal Histories

The Riverkeepers: Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right
John Cronin

A modern-day David and Goliath tale, The Riverkeepers is an impassioned firsthand account by two advocates who have taken on powerful corporate and government polluters to win back the river they love. John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., report from the frontline of environmental activism, the Hudson River Valley, to tell us how we too can fight and win by reclaiming a fundamental right that dates back to the Magna Carta - the right to defend and enjoy our invaluable natural resources.

 My Story as Told by Water
David James Duncan
Sierra Club Books, 2004

A wide-ranging, contemplative exploration of the rivers that touch his life. With a bracing blend of story, logic, science, and comedy, Duncan dissects the hollow industrial platitudes that lead to the ruin of publicly owned rivers for private profit. As an advocate for the bankrupted fishing towns, Native tribes, and unraveling web of life of the Pacific Northwest, he lays bare our biological and religious obligation to breach four of the Columbia and the Snake rivers' 221 massive dams to save wild salmon. Yet Duncan centers even his darkest explorations in the joys, gratitude, and wonder that walking rivers, rod in hand, provides him. Here is a brilliant writer revealing captivating speculations on being born lost, on the discovery of water, on wading as pilgrimage, coho as interior compass, and industrial creeks as blues tunes. Here are rivers perceived as prayer wheels, dying birds as prophets, salmon as life-givers, brown trout as role models, wilderness as our true home, and justice as biologically and spiritually inescapable.

Kayaking the Full Moon: A Journey Down the Yellowstone River to the Soul of Montana
Steve Chapple
HarperPerrenial, 1994

The longest free-flowing river in America serves as a questing ground for a careworn but game journey of homecoming and self- discovery. The idea was for Chapple (coauthor, Burning Desires, 1989; Don't Mind Dying, 1980) to kayak the length of the Yellowstone, source to mouth; to break loose from the honk and nonsense of city life; to get reacquainted with a land he'd left many years before; and to find a home for his family. But reality--in the guise of the mean Montana winter--came for an extended visit sometime in September... forays into the past make for some of the most enjoyable reading here (e.g., histories of Fort Buford and Fort Union), served forth in true campfire style. (Kirkus).

Soul of a Citizen, Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time
Paul Rogat Loeb
St. Martin's Griffin, 1999
Reviewed by Teresa Allen, Administrative Director, Methow Valley Citizens Council

This book chronicles the life cycle of the citizen activist. Its easy to find yourself mirrored in its pages and feel, for once, that someone out there understands our frustrations and sense of being overwhelmed by the vastness of the work yet to be done. I recommend it to anyone looking for inspiration and encouragement.

Let The Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run -- A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth
David Brower
New Society Press, 2000

Brower, who passed away in 2001, has attained the rank of elder, and for this accomplishment alone, he deserves to be listened to, but he is also an active, eloquent, and effective environmentalist. Old enough to remember genuine wilderness, clean air, and fish-filled streams, Brower was a mountaineer, the Sierra Club's first executive director, and founder of the Friends of the Earth, experiences he draws upon with considerable wit and passion in this pithy, autobiographical, and engaging call-to-action. (Booklist)

The Living
Annie Dillard
HarperCollins, 1992
Reviewed by CELP member
and Hydrogeologist Llyn Doremus

My favorite book that I've read recently ... It's about Bellingham!!! A fictitious history that fills in some details that are likely to be pretty close to what may have transpired here 100 years ago, as the town was getting established. The reason I really liked the book is the expressions of the experiences of life attributed to the different characters. It made me remember and appreciate how awesome one's individual life experience can be if you just pay attention to the experiences you are having. Such a simple concept, but very beautifully expressed in this book. Not necessarily related to the CELP mission, but not entirely outside of it, either.

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Water Science

What the River Reveals: Understanding and Restoring Healthy Watersheds
Valerie Rapp
Mountaineers, 1997
Reviewed by CELP Member Barbara Floyd

This book is written in an informative and entertaining style which pulls you to finish the book. There is a lot of good information on how watersheds work with plenty of real world examples, mostly from the Pacific Northwest. What looks "normal" to us now is not the natural state of rivers. The book has a Northwest focus but should be useful in any area. If you want to understand more about how rivers interact with their surroundings and how man has changed that over the last 100 to 200 years, this is a good book to read.

Fresh Water
E.C. Pielou
University of Chicago Press, 1998

With the precision of the professional scientist and the passion of the dedicated amateur, E. C. Pielou conducts a guided tour of fresh water on its course through the natural world. When rain sinks into the ground, how far and fast does it flow underground, and where does it return to the surface? How quickly does water evaporate from lakes and forests to create clouds? What happens when lakes and streams freeze? Does fresh water become naturally contaminated? Pielou's fascination with fresh water gives us a "natural history" that is as remarkable and surprising as the lives of plants and animals.

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Global Perspectives on Water | U.S. History of Water

Columbia River | Salmon | Personal Histories | Water Science