This book has a great cover, title, and sounds super interesting! That said, I was hoping for more of an exciting read than it was. The content of this book is important though and probably the most interesting part was discussing people who do not believe in climate change yet want people to "fix" problems in the Great Lakes. People, in their minds, don't have enough power to hurt nature, but they do have enough power to fix it. I love it when people are called out on thinking like this! Overall, it was an okay book, it just didn't grab me.

I thought I would do a post about two new nonfiction books based geographically in the Midwest, but with much larger implications.

I started to read the introduction to THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT LAKES by Dan Egan and was immediately struck by these facts: "Of the 3 percent or so [of the world water] that is freshwater, most is locked up in the polar caps or trapped so far underground ....And of the sliver left over that exists as surface freshwater readily available for human use, about 20 percent of that – one out of every five gallons available on the planet – can be found in the Great Lakes."

As someone who drives by Lake Michigan every day, I was shocked by much of what I read. Egan was twice a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting on this subject and calls the impression that humans and the lakes have finally learned to get along a "mirage." Instead, he contends that his text will "illuminate an ongoing and unparalleled ecological unraveling of what is arguably North America’s most precious natural resource." Complex and technical at times, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT LAKES will shortly be on our shelves after receiving starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal.

The online review also contained comments about GLASS HOUSE by Brian Alexander who focused on the socio-economic history of Lancaster, Ohio.