Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World

by Laurence C. Smith PhD

Overview

An "eye-opening, sometimes alarming, and ultimately inspiring" natural history of rivers and their complex and ancient relationship with human civilization (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction).

Rivers, more than any road, technology, or political leader, have shaped the course of human civilization. They have opened frontiers, founded cities, settled borders, and fed billions. They promote life, forge peace, grant power, and can capriciously destroy everything in their path. Even today, rivers remain a powerful global force — one that is more critical than ever to our future.

In Rivers of Power, geographer Laurence C. Smith explores the timeless yet underappreciated relationship between rivers and civilization as we know it. Rivers are of course important in many practical ways (water supply, transportation, sanitation, etc). But the full breadth of their influence on the way we live is less obvious. Rivers define and transcend international borders, forcing cooperation between nations. Huge volumes of river water are used to produce energy, raw commodities, and food. Wars, politics, and demography are transformed by their devastating floods. The territorial claims of nations, their cultural and economic ties to each other, and the migrations and histories of their peoples trace back to rivers, river valleys, and the topographic divides they carve upon the world. And as climate change, technology, and cities transform our relationship with nature, new opportunities are arising to protect the waters that sustain us.

Beautifully told and expansive in scope, Rivers of Power reveals how and why rivers have so profoundly influenced our civilization and examines the importance this vast, arterial power holds for the future of humanity.

"As fascinating as it is beautifully written."—Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, and Upheaval

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316412001
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	04/21/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,126,195
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Laurence C. Smith is the John Atwater and Diana Nelson University Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. Previously, he was Professor and Chair of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and of the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, and his scientific research has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, and on NPR, CBC Radio, and BBC, among others. His first book, The World in 2050, won the Walter P. Kistler Book Award and was a Nature Editor's Pick of 2012.

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Chapter 1 The Palermo Stone 9

Chapter 2 On the Border 45

Chapter 3 The Century of Humiliation and Other War Stories 74

Chapter 4 Ruin and Renewal 117

Chapter 5 Seizing the Current 153

Chapter 6 Pork Soup 187

Chapter 7 Going with the Flow 213

Chapter 8 A Thirst for Data 254

Chapter 9 Rivers Rediscovered 283

Acknowledgments 321

References and Further Reading 325

Index 347

Editorial Reviews

"What do rivers give us? Among many other things: cheap transport, dam disasters, fish, floods, highways, hydroelectric power, inspiration for art and music, irrigation water, national boundaries, and the reason for Stalingrad. This book about rivers is as fascinating as it is beautifully written."—Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, and Upheaval

"Laurence C. Smith takes readers on a tour of the world's great rivers -- past, present, and future. The result is fascinating, eye-opening, sometimes alarming, and ultimately inspiring."—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

"Rivers of Power transforms something quite common and often unappreciated into a compelling subject of critical importance to humanity. With scholarship, literary flair, and a personal touch, Smith takes the reader on a fascinating and surprising voyage of discovery, illuminating the myriad ways in which rivers have molded the course of history. He also sounds a clarion call for all of us to invest in understanding, revitalizing, and protecting our rivers as a means of improving our own lives."—Eric Jay Dolin, bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters

"In Rivers of Power, Laurence C. Smith brings gentle humor and a gift for storytelling to the task of explaining a force that has shaped the earth for over three billion years. The result is an eye-opening and occasionally chilling account of the past, present, and future of both rivers and the humans that depend on them. An important new read."
—David Frye, author of Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick

"Smith has written a tour de force -- a narrative as powerful as the rivers he documents. He is up there with Jared Diamond -- a storyteller with real craft, and an academic career that makes him an important part of the modern revival of geography. Rivers determine where we live and often how we live, too. From Herodotus musing on the Nile to the dam makers of modern China, this is their story."
—Fred Pearce, author of When the Rivers Run Dry and The New Wild

"Rivers of Power speaks compellingly to the intersection of geography and history and its significance for the development of the world as we know it."
—Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of the Scott Centre for Polar Research, University of Cambridge

"A valuable, well-observed work of history and geography."
—Kirkus

"This engagingly panoramic and truly global discussion of the connection between rivers and human civilization serves as an important reminder of our dependence upon the planet's arteries of fresh water."—Booklist

From the Publisher

04/01/2020

According to Smith (earth, environmental & planetary sciences, Brown Univ.; The World in 2050), a leading climate scientist, rivers have had an underappreciated influence on human affairs, receiving scant attention until they flood or dry up. To correct this view, he examines how rivers have sustained human societies since our Neolithic ancestors first began farming the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys and the Nile floodplain. In addition to the crucial role of rivers in irrigated agriculture, Smith explores their strategic use during wars, both ancient and modern; the political and legal fallout of major flood disasters; international conflicts over water; megadam projects built or proposed in the developing world; and, finally, explains how our scientific understanding of rivers is being revolutionized by big data pouring in from satellite imagery and remote-sensing technologies. Smith's wide-ranging research gives a historical, scientific, and social perspective on the ways that rivers provide fundamental benefits to human societies around the world. VERDICT A fascinating look at a critical resource and the ideal companion to Fred Pearce's When the Rivers Run Dry.—Cynthia Lee Knight, formerly with Hunterdon Cty. Lib., Flemington, NJ

Library Journal

2020-01-12
An exploration of the role of rivers in sustaining humankind.

Rivers, writes environmental scientist Smith, are in the eye of the beholder. Their value is often not evident to us except in the biggest of pictures, which is why the current generations of humans continue to dam them, fill them with pollutants and plastic bottles, and otherwise mistreat them. "Only by taking the long view is their deeply foundational importance to human civilization revealed," writes the author. This book takes that long view while also pointing to a few encouraging trends (and some discouraging ones as well). On the positive side is the increasing tendency of city governments to undertake projects of riverfront renewal, making parks and refuges where docks and warehouses used to stand—a good thing given, as Smith points out, that sometime in 2008, the majority of the human population shifted, for the first time, from the countryside to the city. Still, notes the author, rivers remain underappreciated, shaping us in ways that are not always easy to discern. For example, they help form cultural and ethnic borders that in turn define nations, and they provide avenues of conquest, exploration, and migration: "Rivers, and physical geography more generally, contribute to the size and shapes of nations and thus the geospatial pattern of economic and military power around the world." When rivers play out, as in the case of ancient Uruk and the urban civilizations of the pre-European American Southwest, then cultures collapse, something to think about given the increasingly evident effects of worldwide climate change on the world's rivers—some of which will dry up, others of which will flood as weather patterns change. Smith examines historical precedents along the Nile, Yangtze, and other rivers to project how these drivers of history, "supercharged fuel lines" of planetary energy, will affect the future.

A valuable, well-observed work of history and geography.

Kirkus Reviews