A publisher located in the Land of 10,000 Lakes might seem like an unlikely promoter of a book about a mostly unacknowledged world water crisis. Furthermore, the publisher is a university press, not generally associated with aggressive investigative reporting. And another surprise — the investigative reporter is not primarily a journalist, but rather an English professor whose academic specialty is postcolonial studies.

For decades, I have been thinking that the next civil war in the United States would be triggered not by human, racially based slavery but rather by battles over water use — for drinking, for farming, for recreation. Author Karen Piper, a University of Missouri professor, has revised my thinking. It turns out the war I project might transcend the United States, spilling over into other nations on other continents.

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