MirageFlorida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.

Part investigative journalism, part environmental history, Mirage reveals how the eastern half of the nation--historically so wet that early settlers predicted it would never even need irrigation--has squandered so much of its abundant fresh water that it now faces shortages and conflicts once unique to the arid West.

Florida's parched swamps and supersized residential developments set the stage in the first book to call attention to the steady disappearance of fresh water in the American East, from water-diversion threats in the Great Lakes to tapped-out freshwater aquifers along the Atlantic seaboard.

Told through a colorful cast of characters including Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Texas oilman Boone Pickens, Mirage ferries the reader through the key water-supply issues facing America and the globe: water wars, the politics of development, inequities in the price of water, the bottled-water industry, privatization, and new-water-supply schemes.

From its calamitous opening scene of a sinkhole swallowing a house in Florida to its concluding meditation on the relationship between water and the American character, Mirage is a compelling and timely portrait of the use and abuse of freshwater in an era of rapidly vanishing natural resources.