This book provides an interesting and very detailed look at the bottled water business. It looks at how the business went from a small niche to a big market. It may either make you go buy more bottled water, or really make you stick with the tap water. Because the truth is not as simple as it is usually presented. Tap water is not as bad as people make it sound. . .for the most part. But bottled water is not much better, and at times, is slightly worse, not to mention its environmental impact. This book does try to look at both sides of the issue in a balanced way as the author travels and speaks to many experts from water utility managers to a bottled water snob to corporate representatives of bottled water. If you have no idea where your drinking water comes from, you have to read this book. Me? I am sticking with my tap water and refilling my bottle. By the way, the history is very interesting as well; the book looks at how springs were seen as medicinal and the early bottling businesses. This is one I recommend. I understand this author has other books, so I will likely look for them as well. ( )

Good backstory of how one of life's basic resources is precious and how we get the pure stuff. Either through the tap or in some cases from expensive bottles. The author did an extensive amount of legwork and research to put the story together.

Although author has personal bias against what Nestle has done in Maine with Poland Springs, she keeps the facts largely separate from the emotions. ( )

The author writes in a lively and easy style. She examines the bottled water industry, how it got to be a fashion statement to drink bottled water, and how it became so much more, where many people now consume nothing but bottled water. She visits bottling plants and boreholes where the water is collected. She investigates the political, economic, and social forces behind both the bottled water movement and the anti-bottled water movement. She also investigates the public and private water systems that deliver tap water to Americans to determine if there is any reality to the idea that bottled water is better. The result is an indictment of the way we look at water, the way we deliver water, and the way we consume water. The book brings clarity (as much as possible) to an issue that is much more complicated than the simplistic narratives would have it. A must read. ( )

city water is safe and a necessary item to be supported; bottled water is only necessary if you buy into the ads of the major corporations and there really is nothing green about the carbon footprint of the water-bottling companies ( )

Royte's in-depth look at water and the water industry is eye-opening and interesting. It also makes me glad to live in an area served by Portland's Bull Run reservoir. Royte leaves us with no answers, just an array of variously weighted choices. The writing is good, the flow a little discursive and meandering. Still, recommended for people interested in water and mega-corporations and pipes and the like. I had no idea that Nestlé owned so many of the bottled water labels. Ick. ( )