Running out : in search of water on the High Plains / Lucas Bessire.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bessire, Lucas, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Groundwater--High Plains (U.S.).

Groundwater.

Water-supply--Social aspects--High Plains (U.S.).

Water-supply.

Physical Description:

xiv, 246 pages: illustration, maps ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2021.

Summary:

An intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America's heartlandThe Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family lived as irrigation farmers and ranchers, to try to make sense of this vital resource and its loss. His search for water across the drying High Plains brings the reader face to face with the stark realities of industrial agriculture, eroding democratic norms, and surreal interpretations of a looming disaster. Yet the destination is far from predictable, as the book seeks to move beyond the words and genres through which destruction is often known. Instead, this journey into the morass of eradication offers a series of unexpected discoveries about what it means to inherit the troubled legacies of the past and how we can take responsibility for a more inclusive, sustainable future.An urgent and unsettling meditation on environmental change, Running Out is a revelatory account of family, complicity, loss, and what it means to find your way back home.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

MAP OF THE OGALLALA AQUIFER, 2015

MAP OF THE LITTLE ROCK HOUSE

NOTE TO THE READER

LINES

BONES

DUST

CLOUDS

AFTERWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ILLUSTRATIONS

INDEX.

ISBN:

9780691212654

0691212651

OCLC:

1257325086