The Big Thirst

Charles Fishman is the author of The Big Thirst. A journalist based in Washington, DC, Fishman has written other nonfiction books on science and economics, including The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works—and How It’s Transforming the American Economy (2006) and One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon (2019). In The Big Thirst he examines water scarcity and allocation through a primarily economic lens, arguing that the industrial production of safe, abundant, affordable water has made this important substance invisible. People take water for granted and often waste it. Fishman warns that a water crisis is underway and insists that solving the problem will require people to pay more attention to water, to properly value its worth and relate to it as they did before water became invisible.

Wolfenden is a biochemistry researcher specializing in water. Wolfenden mentions that water in proteins shapes our bodies.

Smyth, a geologist, researches water in rocks. Smyth says that rocks deep beneath the ocean may store large amounts of water, balancing the amounts of water in the oceans.