A mixture of adventure story and mysticism, featuring two young men who go climbing in the Himalayas near the source of the sacred Ganges, searching for the meaning of life and death through water. Joe Simpson is the author of the mountaineering book, Touching the Void.

"Water for the People: The Acequia Heritage of New Mexico in a Global Context is a new anthology of essays by world-renowned acequia scholars and community members that situates New Mexico's acequia heritage and its inherent sustainable design within a global framework. Initially inspired by two special issues of the Green Fire Times (GFT) that centered on New Mexico's rich acequia traditions, Water for the People features twenty-five essays (including the Epilogue) highlighting acequia culture, use, and history in New Mexico and northern Mexico complemented by accompanying articles that focus on acequias in Chile and Peru, Spain, the Middle East, Nepal, and the Philippines. A hybrid Iberian model of irrigation melded with irrigated agricultural practices already existing in the Americas in places like Peru, Mesoamerica, and the high-altitude deserts of northern New Spain inhabited by Puebloan peoples that is now the American Southwest. In the case of the upper Rio Grande, the lush landscapes created by acequias in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries and later continue to feed their communities today despite threats of economic modernity, urbanization, private water markets, and conditions of extreme water scarcity due to cycles of prolonged drought and the emerging impacts of climate change. Water for the People demonstrates through a series of connected essays how the acequia in New Mexico is part of an agricultural web of creative irrigation works that stretches from Valencia, Spain, to the Middle East, Mexico, the Philippines, Argentina, and elsewhere. This volume celebrates acequia practices and traditions worldwide and shows how these ancient irrigation systems continue to provide arid regions a model for water governance, sustainable food systems, and in the case of New Mexico, community traditions that year after year reaffirms a deep cultural and spiritual relationship with the land. Ditch-irrigation systems have stood as the backbone of New Mexican landscape and garden construction for over four centuries. Acequias offer a proven and elegant answer to these everlasting questions: How do you provide consistent water so that a garden, field, or pasture will thrive? And how do you do so in a place that is known for its droughts, heat, thin soils, remarkably small streams and springs, and other scarce agricultural resources? Existing literature on acequias include technical and historical studies, ethnographies, and even memoir, but none has the global scope of this anthology"--

Water is the source of life, the sustenance for living, the resource needed for mfg., mining, ag.; the element required to grow our lawns, to water our landscaping, to shower us with refreshment; it is the place where we play; it provides the snow for our winter recreation, and it provides the habitat for our wildlife. Water in Amer. society is more than a physical entity; its symbolic values and non-instrumental uses are growing in significance. This book is about the issues associated with these symbolic values and uses of water: the challenges they present -- in our language, in our allocation mechanisms, in our commun. -- the conflicts raised; and the potential for resolving the difficult, contentious and complex issues concerning the use of water for various purposes.