Book description
Second only to soda, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the
most popular beverage in the country. The brands have become so
ubiquitous that we're hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian
were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and
France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of
dollars, have we begun to question what it is we're drinking.
In this intelligent, accomplished work of narrative journalism,
Elizabeth Royte does for water what Michael Pollan did for food: she
finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring
it from distant aquifers to our supermarkets. Along the way, she
investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our
water? How much should we drink? Should we have to pay for it? Is tap
safe water safe to drink? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in
to make it potable? What happens to all those plastic bottles we carry
around as predictably as cell phones? And of course, what's better:
tap water or bottled?
Royte deserves credit for her tenacity and well-balanced approach...
Lively investigative journalism.
Elizabeth Royte has
written for the New York Times Magazine, Harper s, National
Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, and The New Yorker. She is the
author of Garbage Land and The Tapir s
Morning Bath.
