Elixir

The story of our most vital resource, and how it has shaped the history of every human society, spans five millennia, from ancient Mesopotamia to the parched Sun Belt, from ancient Rome, whose mighty aqueducts still supply modern cities, to China, where emperors marshaled armies of laborers in a centuries-long struggle to tame powerful rivers. Anthropologist Fagan sets out three ages of water: In the first, lasting thousands of years, water was scarce--so precious that it became sacred in almost every culture. By the time of the Industrial Revolution, human ingenuity had brought water to the…