Empire of Water
An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply
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Narrated by:
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Douglas R. Pratt
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By:
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David Soll
About this listen
Supplying water to millions is not simply an engineering and logistical challenge. As David Soll shows in his finely observed history of the nation’s largest municipal water system, the task of providing water to New Yorkers transformed the natural and built environment of the city, its suburbs, and distant rural watersheds. Almost as soon as New York City completed its first municipal water system in 1842, it began to expand the network, eventually reaching far into the Catskill Mountains, more than one hundred miles from the city.
Empire of Water explores the history of New York City’s water system - from the late 19th century to the early 21st century - focusing on the geographical, environmental, and political repercussions of the city’s search for more water. By tracing the evolution of the city’s water conservation efforts and watershed management regime, Soll reveals the tremendous shifts in environmental practices and consciousness that occurred during the 20th century.
Few episodes better capture the long-standing upstate-downstate divide in New York than the story of how mountain water came to flow from spigots in Brooklyn and Manhattan. His account of this unlikely environmental success story offers a "behind the scenes" perspective on the nation’s most ambitious and wide-ranging watershed protection program.
The book is published by Cornell University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
"This is first-rate environmental history." (Martin Melosi, University of Houston, author of The Sanitary City)
"Recommended." (Choice)
"David Soll ably deepens our understanding of New York's water supply." (American Historical Review)
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Sustainability
- A History
- By: Jeremy L. Caradonna
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Caradonna's unique and concise history broadens our understanding of what "sustainability" means, revealing how it progressed from a relatively marginal concept to an ideal that shapes everything from individual lifestyles, government and corporate strategies, and even national and international policy. For anyone seeking understand the history of those striving to make the world a better place to live, here's a place to start.
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Excellent
- By marc grub on 03-06-17
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Every Nation for Itself
- Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World
- By: Ian Bremmer
- Narrated by: Willis Sparks
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Forget the G-7 and the G-20; we are entering a leaderless "G- Zero" era- with profound implications for every country and corporation. The world power structure is facing a vacuum at the top. With the unifying urgency of the financial crisis behind us, the diverse political and economic values of the G-20 are curtailing the world's most powerful governments' ability to mediate growing global challenges. There is no viable alternative group to take its place.
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Well articulated and thought provoking
- By Mark on 08-09-12
By: Ian Bremmer
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Crabgrass Frontier
- The Suburbanization of the United States
- By: Kenneth T. Jackson
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day.
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There is so much to think about here.
- By Richard McKown on 06-25-23
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The Challenge for Africa
- By: Wangari Maathai
- Narrated by: Chinasa Ogbuagu
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Nobel Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai has campaigned for environmental activism and democracy in Africa for more thanthree decades. In The Challenge for Africa, she delivers an insightful call to action, presenting a realistic look at the diverse problems facing Africans today.
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10 years later, this is still powerful.
- By Presence on 04-21-18
By: Wangari Maathai
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The End of the Asian Century
- War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World's Most Dynamic Region
- By: Michael R. Auslin
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Historian and geopolitical expert Michael Auslin argues that far from being a cohesive powerhouse, Asia is a fractured region threatened by stagnation and instability. Here he provides a comprehensive account of the economic, military, political, and demographic risks that bedevil half of our world, arguing that Asia, working with the United States, has a unique opportunity to avert catastrophe - but only if it acts boldly.
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Wake up Call
- By Daniel B. on 07-07-17
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The Dragon's Gift
- The Real Story of China in Africa
- By: Deborah Brautigam
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. But China's tradition of secrecy about its aid fueled rumors and speculation, making it difficult to gauge the risks and opportunities provided by China's growing embrace. This well-timed book, by one of the world's leading experts, provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy.
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The Book Is Too Much To Digest
- By DING MING YING 丁明英 on 05-15-20
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Golden Gulag
- Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California
- By: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
- Narrated by: Machelle Williams
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Since 1980, the number of people in US prisons has increased more than 450 percent. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world". Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces conjoined to produce the prison boom.
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Started off great but devolved into case study
- By normal person on 10-16-21
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Building the New American Economy
- Smart, Fair, and Sustainable
- By: Jeffrey D. Sachs, Bernie Sanders - foreward
- Narrated by: Rudy Sanda
- Length: 4 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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With a nation seemingly more divided than ever, many worry that Americans risk losing ground on solving the complex, interrelated problems the country faces - including rising inequality, the specter of climate change, astronomical health care costs, and economic stagnation. The renowned economist Jeffrey D. Sachs offers a practical approach to move America toward a new consensus: sustainable development.
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If only....
- By Baboo TH on 01-24-18
By: Jeffrey D. Sachs, and others
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The Road Taken
- The History and Future of America's Infrastructure
- By: Henry Petroski
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers has, in its latest report, given American roads and bridges a grade of D and C+, respectively, and has described roughly 65,000 bridges in the United States as 'structurally deficient'. This crisis - and one need look no further than the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota to see that it is indeed a crisis - shows little sign of abating short of a massive change in attitude amongst politicians and the American public.
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Well put
- By Lawrence on 08-10-17
By: Henry Petroski
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Windfall
- How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power
- By: Meghan L. O'Sullivan
- Narrated by: Eliza Foss
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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As a new administration focuses on raising American energy production, O'Sullivan's Windfall describes how new energy realities have profoundly affected the world of international relations and security. New technologies led to oversupplied oil markets and an emerging natural gas glut. This did more than drive down prices. It changed the structure of markets and altered the way many countries wield power and influence.
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A super-sized editorial
- By Easycfp on 10-05-18
What listeners say about Empire of Water
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-14-21
Eye Opening
Overall, an excellent book. A lifelong NYer I have been very familiar with the NYC water system, or so I thought. The fights and loss of homes and whole communities, environmental issues...wow. Only issue I had was with all the mispronounced names! Irked me the whole time...in NYC, Koch rhymes with scotch! Great book though.
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- John Cashman
- 08-14-20
Interesting book
This was an interesting listen, and has a great deal of information on the more recent history. I wish there was more on the earlier periods. I would also have liked to learn more about comparisons with other municipal water systems. It's still very worthwhile.
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- Roy
- 08-09-22
Mispronounced Regional Names and Terms.
Yikes! It's a good story but Ramapo is continually mispronounced. It's pronounced Ram-a-po not Rama-po!
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- James P. Sullivan
- 08-08-20
How NYC came to dominate the waters of its region
Empire of Water is a worthwhile examination of how New York City became the owner and landlord of extensive acreage in the Catskills in its quest to build a reliable and clean water supply for its burgeoning population. The book, as its subtitle indicates, is a political, environmental, and really also a social survey and not an engineering study of the development of the water system, and how the city's relationship to that system changed over the course of a century. New York City, in the creation of this system, displaced thousands of upstate residents in several rounds of reservoir building, and in its final round even took control over the sources of the Delaware River, affecting Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Once the system was complete, however, the city became the quintessential absentee landlord, neglecting its properties to the detriment of its neighbors, leading to a series of crises in the late 20th century that forced a reckoning.
The book's chief faults are perhaps a too brief examination of just whom the city displaced, and a gloss over just why New York never tapped the Hudson.
The book is well narrated, and my chief quibble is that Ed Koch's last name should be pronounced like "Kotch", not "Coke" like the Koch brothers.
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2 people found this helpful