Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America

Veteran journalist Chris Wood declares war on North America's blasé attitude toward the environment in general and water in particular. The battle he wages in his awesome, terrifying Dry Spring (awesome for its depth of research, terrifying for what it portends) is positively ferocious. Wood lobs facts like grenades, and he hits his target--our collective conscience and fear of a very grim future--every time. But much more than a clinical recitation of data, Dry Spring is Wood's impassioned plea for action. Even gas company lobbyists and Fox News anchors are hard-pressed to refute his evidence. And while many of these stats have appeared elsewhere, Wood succeeds in aggregating and connecting the dots between local phenomena and larger planetary changes. Not since Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth has the Earth had such a persuasive advocate. --Kim Hughes