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Current Affairs | Doris S. Michaels Literary Agency, Inc.

Category Archives: Current Affairs

Drinking Water

As seen on nytimes.com:

Four Books Explore Humans’ Relationship With Water

By 
Published: October 7, 2013

Earth, “the blue planet,” has a lot of water. Most of the planet’s surface is covered with it. But less than 5 percent of that water is fresh, and much of that is locked up in ice sheets or inconveniently far underground. And it is not always most abundant where it is most needed.

As a result, we are drawing on underground aquifers faster than they can recharge. And the water we have is often polluted by sewage, industrial waste, parasites and other contaminants that can make “natural” water unsafe to drink.

In short, as James Salzman puts it in “Drinking Water,” one of four new books that dive into our species’ relationship with water, clean supplies have always been the exception, not the norm. As recently as 1900, he writes, 1 in 70 Americans died of a waterborne disease before age 70.

Though he ranges widely, Mr. Salzman, who teaches law and environmental studies at Duke, focuses on what one might call social justice. Access to water may be viscerally regarded as a “right,” but he points out that the best way to ensure a reliable supply of pure water, especially in poor regions, is often to privatize it.

Rwanda, Inc. Authors Featured in FORBES

As seen on forbes.com:Rwanda, Inc.

How To Eat An Egg In A Rebounding Rwanda

By Patricia Crisafulli & Andrea Redmond

In a rural preschool at Rugarama in northern Rwanda, some two hours north of the capital city of Kigali, 90 or so three- to six-year-olds sit patiently on a grassy patch outside a crumbling one-room schoolhouse with only gaps where windows and the door should be. Having sung, prayed, counted, and chanted the days of the week and months of the year in their native Kinyarwanda and English (fluency in which is a national education goal), the children wait for the highlight of the day: a hard-boiled egg.

The B Team Website Up And Running!

John Elkington, author of The Zeronauts, helps launch The B Team website, a non-profit organization led by Sir Richard Branson and former CEO of Puma Jochen Zeitz. Zeitz is currently co-authoring with Elkington on their new book, Tomorrow’s Bottom Line.

As seen on bteam.org:

The B Team is a not-for-profit initiative that has been formed by a group of global business leaders to create a future where the purpose of business is to be a driving force for social, environmental and economic benefit.