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The Colorado River is a crucial resource for a large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. New Yorker staff writer David Owen, and author of more than a dozen books, delivers his latest work, Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River, and takes readers on an eye-opening adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry. Exploring the complexities of this vast man-made ecosystem with environmental reporter Judith Lewis Mernit, Owen illuminates the high-stakes of the water wars of the West.
David Owen is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author more than a dozen books. He lives in northwest Connecticut with his wife, the writer Ann Hodgman.
Judith Lewis Mernit is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. Her work on energy, the environment, economic justice and public health has appeared in Capital & Main, High Country News, Sierra Magazine, Yale Environment 360, TakePart, The Atlantic and the LA Weekly.