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Running Out
- In Search of Water on the High Plains
- Narrated by: John Chancer
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
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Publisher's summary
Finalist for the National Book Award
This audiobook narrated by John Chancer recounts an intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America's heartland.
The 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 listener 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.
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Story
Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment.
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Narrator mispronounces everything
- By Catherine on 01-27-22
By: Timothy Egan
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The Longest Road
- Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
- By: Philip Caputo
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Philip Caputo, who had just turned 70, his wife, and their two English setters took off in a truck hauling an Airstream camper from Key West, Florida, en route via back roads and state routes to Deadhorse, Alaska. The journey took four months and covered 17,000 miles, during which Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are really about in the 21st century.
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Very Disappointing
- By Amazon Customer on 03-25-18
By: Philip Caputo
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Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.
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California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
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Irons in the Fire
- By: John McPhee
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Fabulously entertaining and filled with the intriguing trivia of life, Irons in the Fire is another impeccably crafted collection of seven essays by John McPhee. His peerless writing, punctuated with a sharp sense of humor and fascinating detail, has earned him legions of fans across the country.
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New New Journalism is on Fire
- By Darwin8u on 02-10-15
By: John McPhee
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Reservation Restless
- By: Jim Kristofic
- Narrated by: Jim Kristofic
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In the powerful and haunting lands of the Southwest, rainbows grow unexpectedly from the sky, mountain lions roam the desert, and summer storms roll over the Colorado River. As a park ranger, Kristofic explores the Ganado valley, traces the paths of the Anasazi, and finds mythic experiences on sacred mountains that explain the pain and loss promised for every person who decides to love. After reconnecting with his Navajo sister and brother, Kristofic must confront his own nightmares of the Anglo society and the future it has created.
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It is a gift to see the world through Jim's eyes
- By Josh Boyle on 06-23-21
By: Jim Kristofic
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The Great Wall of China and the Salton Sea
- Monuments, Missteps, and the Audacity of Ambition
- By: Russell Rathbun
- Narrated by: Larry Herron
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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We've been building and making things ever since we stumbled out of paradise. Some of those things are incredible continuations of God's creation, while others are nothing but ambitious catastrophes. We continue making, says Russell Rathbun, but we've lost ourselves in the process.
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Excellent narrator
- By Tammy on 03-17-18
By: Russell Rathbun
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Lentil Underground
- Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America
- By: Liz Carlisle
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the "Lentil Underground" begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America's Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to "get big or get out." But 27-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climates, so their farmers aren't beholden to industrial methods.
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Fingers on the pulse of sustainable ag
- By shakinfist on 06-30-20
By: Liz Carlisle
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Living in the Long Emergency
- Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward
- By: James Howard Kunstler
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler described the global predicaments that would pitch the USA into political and economic turmoil in the 21st century - the end of affordable oil, climate irregularities, and flagging economic growth, to name a few. Now, he returns with a book that takes an up-close-and-personal approach to how real people are living now - surviving The Long Emergency as it happens.
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Please Read Before Buying
- By K. Skoog on 05-12-20
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Yellow Dirt
- An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed
- By: Judy Pasternak
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded an entire tribe of people. The Navajo worked unprotected in the uranium mines that fueled the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Long after these mines were abandoned, Navajos in all four corners of the Reservation (which borders Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) continued grazing their animals on sagebrush flats riddled with uranium that had been blasted from the ground.
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Dirty little secret of nuclear development
- By Buretto on 08-13-20
By: Judy Pasternak
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Strangers in Their Own Land
- Anger and Mourning on the American Right
- By: Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country - a stronghold of the conservative right. As she gets to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she famously champions, Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground and quickly warms to the people she meets.
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Performance undercuts thesis
- By married, one tall dog, one smelly dog on 01-02-17
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Methland
- The Death and Life of an American Small Town
- By: Nick Reding
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people.
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Beautifully written, but insubstantial
- By Flavius Krakdaddius on 02-10-10
By: Nick Reding
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Wild Horse Country
- The History, Myth, and Future of the Mustang
- By: David Philipps
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In a powerful blend of history and contemporary reporting, New York Times reporter David Philipps traces the rich history of wild horses in America: their introduction by the Spanish conquistadors, their role in the epic battles between Native Americans and settlers, their vital place in American self-mythology. He travels through some of the most remote parts of the American West, known as Wild Horse Country, to investigate the wild horse's current dilemma, caught between the clashing ideals of ranchers, scientists, and more.
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Inaccurate Read
- By Lara Hooper on 07-09-19
By: David Philipps
What listeners say about Running Out
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- L.McK
- 11-21-21
I'm Stuck Between Wooed & Afraid
Bessire shocks the conscience and pulls away apathetic scabs causing us confront realities we would rather not face but simultaneously soothes those spots with a rich story and writing style that makes me feel a part of the story. I really hope people whose communities are affected by ground water depletion worldwide will engage and create win/win changes.
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- Caroline Pufalt
- 11-29-21
Water is life, so….
What an amazing lyrical, factual, and multi faceted story. Part water history, family and community story . It’s southwestern KS but it’s all of our story.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Deb
- 05-09-23
Both informative and beautiful.
I expected this to be a book about aquifer conservation, and it was, but it was also a touching memoir about regret, masculinity, and ultimately understanding.
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- Patrick Peerboom
- 11-15-21
Great Listen
A very educational tale on the problems of aquifer depletion & overarching bureaucracy, beautifully narrated by the calming and smooth voice of John Chancer. With descriptive landscapes the likes of Willa Cather, and riveting journalism the likes of Bob Woodward, this story will not leave you wanting. I especially appreciate that the farmers in this story are not dehumanized or made out to be the bad guys, but victims of circumstance, and respectable workers. 10/10 would read again. Also, hello Snufkin.
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- Cole
- 03-09-22
Aquifer Depletion
Engaging story where the author reconciles with his estranged father to go on an investigation of aquifer depletion in southwestern Kansas. It is wonderfully written where you feel like you are along for the ride with them in the Great Plains. The information they uncover digs deep not only in the community and system at large, but is also part of their family history.
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