Book Release! Reflections by Mark Zeitoun
Pick up a copy of Reflections: Understanding Our Use and Abuse of Water by Mark Zeitoun in your local bookstore today! You can also buy a copy online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Zeitoun delves into the essential role water plays in our lives and how bad actors have twisted and abused its life-sustaining properties. Water is something we all too often take for granted, and this eye-opening book will put it in a new light. Every decision we make, from the bottled water on grocery store shelves to air strikes on water treatment plants, has global implications for peace and security. Zeitoun takes the global to the personal: what we can do as individuals in our daily habits, purchasing decisions, and advocacy in local infrastructure. After reading this book, turning the faucet will never be the same.
Congratulations to Mark Zeitoun for his new book Reflections: Understanding Our Use and Abuse of Water from Oxford University Press! This project was an absolute delight and has been one of the most impactful of my life.
As I was editing this, I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car driving through Las Vegas and California’s Central Valley. Looking out the window at dry riverbeds, elaborate irrigation setups, and the muddy puddle that was once Lake Mead really brought this message home.
Living in Atlanta, I am well aware of the Supreme Court battles between Georgia and Florida (and also sometimes Alabama) over the Chattahoochee River, which supplies Atlanta, the agricultural land of South Georgia, all the way down to the Okeefenokee Swamp. Water wars, luckily waged in court and not with missiles and bombs, affect my daily life too.
I drink quite a bit of sparkling water, and I never once stopped to think about the environmental implications of my La Croix habit. I’ve since switched to Montane, a company that sources its water from a spring in the North Georgia mountains.
I’m almost mad at how much this book changed my life. Almost. Really though, I’m deeply grateful for its impact and for being given the privilege of having a role in bringing it to life.
Thank you, Mark, and congratulations!
Back Cover:
Water is central to all life, but we use it to destroy. Water can nourish, but we use it to starve. It can cleanse and unify, but we ensure it contaminates and divides. The consequences of continuing to desecrate or beginning to restore water's inner grace are tremendous—and will reflect as much on us as portend our future. Drawing upon twenty-five years of professional work as a water engineer, negotiator, and scholar, Mark Zeitoun provides a unique insider's account of this phenomenon. He explains how unchecked assumptions about water mix with political and economic systems to create an insatiable and ruinous thirst for ever more water. He shows how we use water to lethal effect in wars, and demolish drinking-water systems with wanton disregard. He questions why we transform the most majestic of rivers into canals which spark international conflict and challenge our capacity for preventative diplomacy. The answers reflect more about our society than we might care to admit.
If we are to restore water’s inner grace, Zeitoun argues, we should worry not so much about “saving” water, but think about what we do with it when it is in our hands.
Early Reviews
In Reflections Mark Zeitoun journeys from the beautiful to the barbaric—from sunlit pools to wells stuffed with corpses—and in the process reveals water as a mirror to the modern world and its terrible pathologies. Combining the practical insights of an engineer with the sensitivities of a philosopher and the anger of a concerned global citizen, this is a lucid, astute and poignant set of reflections. Highly recommended.
Jan Selby, Chair in Politics and International Relations, Sheffield University
A frank and powerful assessment by one of the most knowledgeable water specialists. A compelling argument is made for understanding our relationship with water in a new way, rather than treating it as a political or economic commodity. A must-read for anyone who wants to reconnect with water and contribute to social justice.
Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, Professor of International Law, University of Geneva
Zeitoun’s wealth of experience - from the frontlines of armed conflict to the sharp edge of political negotiations—gives him a voice of authority, wisdom and humanity on the use and abuse of water, with its life-or-death implications. He shows us in no uncertain terms that our relationship with—and respect for—water is vital to the future of our planet and all who live on it, holding the key to destruction and (re)construction in equal measures.
Robert Mardini, Director-General, International Committee of the Red Cross
A compelling manifesto that resonates deeply.
Marwa Daody, Seif Ghobash Chair in Arab Studies, Georgetown University
An important book that will focus minds on the consequences of misunderstanding water and how we can change our perceptions and actions.Tristan Gooley, Author of How to Read Water
Prof Zeitoun provides us an elegant call for civility in the ways we individually and collectively deal with one of our most precious resources. Essential to the future of humankind—indeed instrumental in determining our potential horizons, he escorts us back and forth between the ways we feel about water and the things we do with it—revealing unpleasant truths about our collective use and abuse of and through water. Whether it is taken for granted or the underlying cause of wars, treated as commonplace or hoarded selfishly, water is critical to our futures in ways eloquently explained and illustrated in this rewarding read.
Jamie Bartram, Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Mark Zeitoun’s most recent book offers a highly informative and convincingly argued set of reflections on water. It leads the reader beyond the simplistic truisms about water into the world of social complexity, of the insatiable thirst for power and of brutality of armed conflicts. He argues that human ingenuity is using water ‘in impressively clever and incredibly myopic ways’ Can this change? Yes, it can and there are elements of a more farsighted approach visible in the evolution of international law. However, real progress will require a better understanding of water and the present book will help.
Danilo Türk, Former President of the Republic of Slovenia and Chairman of the Global High Level Panel on Water and Peace
Zeitoun’s book reflecting on water use and abuse is a highly readable and accessible account of the complexities surrounding a topic which is fundamental to all our lives. It spans politics, history, sociology, philosophy and law as well as the practicalities of managing water and how this has evolved over time. It serves as an excellent primer for both specialists and non-specialists on an increasingly pertinent topic which interplays with climate change, armed conflict, and health—something which is increasingly relevant as waterborne diseases, their drivers and their impacts affect the most vulnerable in our societies.
Aula Abarra, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer, Imperial College London