A small drop of water falls from the clouds, small and weak it longs for power but finds out what real strength is. "The Story of a Drop of Water" is a text-free story told only through its beautiful illustrations.

In Watering the Revolution Mikael D. Wolfe transforms our understanding of Mexican agrarian reform through an environmental and technological history of water management in the emblematic Laguna region. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico and the United States, Wolfe shows how during the long Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) engineers’ distribution of water paradoxically undermined land distribution. In so doing, he highlights the intrinsic tension engineers faced between the urgent need for water conservation and the imperative for development during the contentious modernization of the Laguna's existing flood irrigation method into one regulated by high dams, concrete-lined canals, and motorized groundwater pumps. This tension generally resolved in favor of development, which unintentionally diminished and contaminated the water supply while deepening existing rural social inequalities by dividing people into water haves and have-nots, regardless of their access to land. By uncovering the varied motivations behind the Mexican government’s decision to use invasive and damaging technologies despite knowing they were ecologically unsustainable, Wolfe tells a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of short-sighted development policies.

Water management has become a major issue for public policies at any latitude. How and why this happened could not be assessed efficiently without developing a longitudinal and comparative analysis, such as the one in this book. Institutional arrangements for the provision and the use of water are peculiarly persistent as well as remarkably resilient: This makes them an ideal subject of an historical account. Not that history is worth writing about only when it treats immutable phenomena. On the contrary; its main purpose is to record changes and possibly explain them. But long-lasting continuity urges the scholar to venture into the remote past, since only there are to be discovered the initial causes and the deeper meanings of the institutions under scrutiny. Also, continuity makes the strength of path-dependency all the more evident and consequently underlines the weight of history.

The History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Present traces the last 500 years of Mexican history, from the indigenous empires that were devastated by the Spanish conquest through the election of 2006 and its aftermath. The book offers a straightforward chronological survey of Mexican history from the pre-colonial times to the present, and includes a glossary as well as numerous tables and images for comprehensive study. For additional information and classroom resources please visit The History of Mexico companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/russell.

This is the first book to explore the relationship between the people and the environment of Mexico. Featuring a dozen essays by leading scholars, it heralds the arrival of environmental history as a major area of study in the field of Mexican history and introduces a new book series: “Latin American Landscapes.”

This book addresses the following topics: the contemporary model for water management and alternative approaches; the socioeconomic framework, water policy and institutions; water use for food purposes, water-resources inventory and irrigation; manifestations of welfare loss and water prices; change in dietary patterns and water security; hydrological stress and pressures on water availability; groundwater management problems; vulnerability and climate change; water demand of major crops; gray water footprint and water pollution; gray water footprint and mining; virtual water and food trade; estimates of the water footprint of four key cereals, forage, livestock and bottled drinks. It is the result of a cooperation between 16 researchers from eleven Mexican academic institutions.