The Big Thirst is excellent, I read it last year (after hearing an interview with the author by Terry Gross) and highly recommend it.
Here’s a bit more about the water situation in India–which affects everybody, rich and poor alike, who all have to spend some amount of time/money daily to have access to water:
Most major cities, for instance, had water service twenty-four hours a day in 1947, when India became independent from the British Empire, at least in the urban cores, and many cities still provided twenty-four-hour-a-day service in some areas right into the 1970s and 1980s. That level of service, and more important, the expectation of that level of service, has slipped away, both in the professional water community itself and among Indians.
Not that we should feel complacent about water service here. It’s estimated that one of every six gallons of water (16%) is lost through leaks in our nation’s aging water mains.
I’ve got the book and will be reviewing it soon. Water is so crucial yet so ignored. 16% waste? Fix that and many water shortages would no longer exist.