As Brian Fagan demonstrates in Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind , reliable access to water resources has been a requisite of human civilization from their origins. Fagan proposes that there are three historic eras of humanity’s relationship to water. Until the Industrial revolution, owing to its scarcity and its unpredictability, water was treated as a divine gift and thus was central to many rituals and belief systems. With technology, water came to be viewed as a commodity, which could be exploited for economic and even military benefits. Finally, today we are slowly coming to realize that water is a resource, which must be managed sustainably.

In recent years, there have been a number of books written about environmental threats to freshwater resources. See my comparative summary review at
http://gregg-sapp.suite101.com/our-dr...