Reviews
St.
Petersburg Times, October 14, 2007
Midwest Book Review, July 2007
Dayton Daily News, July 15, 2007
Publisher's Weekly (starred review) April
30, 2007
Library Journal, April 15, 2007
With lively prose
and a journalist’s eye for a good story, Cynthia Barnett offers a
sobering account of water scarcity problems facing Florida – one of
our wettest states – and the rest of the East Coast. Drawing on lessons
learned from the American West, Mirage uses the lens of cultural attitudes
about water use and misuse to plead for reform. Sure to engage and fascinate
as it informs.
— Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall professor of law and public policy, University of Arizona, and author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters.
Mirage is
the finest general study to date of the freshwater-supply crisis in Florida.
Well-meaning villains abound in Cynthia Barnett's story, but so, too, do
heroes, such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr., Nathaniel Reed, and Marjorie Harris
Carr. The author's research is as thorough as her prose is graceful. Drinking
water is the new oil. Get used to it.
— Michael Gannon, distinguished professor of history, University of Florida , and author of Florida: A Short History.
Never before
has the case been more compellingly made that America's dependence on a
free and abundant water supply has become an illusion. Cynthia Barnett does
it by telling us the stories of the amazing personalities behind our water
wars, the stunning contradictions that allow the wettest state to have the
most watered lawns, and the thorough research that makes her conclusions
inescapable. Barnett has established herself as one of Florida's best journalists
and Mirage is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future
of the state.
— Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau Chief, Miami Herald.
