Customer Reviews

Deep Immersion: The Experience of Water

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A fascinating book that makes you rethink water and its role as essential to our existence -- physically, spiritually and aesthetically. A wonderful study of ways in which we think about water while taking it for granted. When I tell my students now that buying bottles of water would have been unthinkable when I was a child, they are astonished. France makes us think deeply about our relationship to water as a right or a commodity. Read it if you have patience with or affection for that which is not always linear.

If you are looking for a reference on the romance of water, as well as figures on its abuse, this is the book. It's a great book for water quotes and a review of its treatment through history but not one of the plethora of environmental alarmist books in doctoral thesis format that shout "something needs to be done by someone" without offering tools and ideas for positive change. Get this book for the water lovers in your life. It's also good for the bathroom. Restores our appreciation and reminds us of the sensuality of this basic element that we take for granted.

Chuck Harris, a landscape architect and Harvard professor emeritus who doesn't use the Web, wrote this note to me about it.
This is a remarkable, even awesome, little book. It contains so much rich references to the role of water in all of our lives, whether in the "deep past" or the "post-modern" era.

I read it entirely over the rest of the weekend. It offers a deep sense of the value and love of water in its many forms
and as it impacts all aspects of our lives from biological survival, to parts of functional systems, and, finally, to the very essence of all human's senses including BEAUTY, LOVE, and SPIRIT..

I remain in awe of the sweep of its efforts to illustrate the diverse experiences of water with almost overwhelming numbers of examples -- in quotes and paraphrases -- from all types of experiences and expressions of the remarkable qualities of WATER.

Deep Immersion: The Experience Of Water by environmental studies respected academician and water management expert Robert Lawrence France (Harvard Design School) is a meditation on the power and profundity of water, and what it means for those individuals who embrace a close relationship with it. A spiritual reflection that is both informed and informative, Deep Immersion is an immensely moving, thoughtful, and thought-provoking postulation on the human condition and connection to the essential substance that brings life to our planet. Deep Immersion is enthusiastically recommended reading for academia as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in nature, the environment, and the contribution of water to diverse forms of outdoor recreations.

In a time where we as an urban society are fundamentally detached from the natural process and life of water, Robert Lawrence France writes a refreshing work of reattachement and understanding. If you enjoy drinking water or looking at the horizon, maybe it is time to understand Water. Deep Emersion puts it all on the table by recognizing waters ephemeral qualities as the substance of life.

I have to say how utterly disappointed I was with this book. The writing is so scattered. The book seems to consist mainly of quoting other authors and half-baked ideas, written in a style that is so dry, so disengaging, it's hard to get through a page, let alone the entire book.

Interesting subject are given a line, maybe two, then followed up with quote after quote and study after study, statistics and percentages followed by statistics and percentages.

For a subject as poetic as water, this is about as un-poetic a book as is possible. Such a waste.

Do NOT waste your time or money.