An incisive, intrepid, and habit-changing narrative investigation into the commercialization of our most basic human need: drinking water.

Having already surpassed milk and beer, and second now only to soda, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the country. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we're hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, have we begun to question what it is we're drinking and why.

In this intelligent, eye-opening work of narrative journalism, Elizabeth Royte does for water what Eric Schlosser did for fast food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from nature to our supermarkets. Along the way, she investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our water? What happens when a bottled-water company stakes a claim on your town's source? Should we have to pay for water? Is the stuff coming from the tap completely safe? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in to make it potable? What's the environmental footprint of making, transporting, and disposing of all those plastic bottles?

A riveting chronicle of one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth century as well as a powerful environmental wake-up call, Bottlemania is essential reading for anyone who shells out two dollars to quench their daily thirst.

"Royte (Garbage Land) plunges into America's mighty thirst for bottled water in an investigation of 'one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.' As tap water has become cleaner and better-tasting, the bottled water industry has exploded into a $60 billion business; consumers guzzle more high-priced designer water than milk or beer and spend billions on brands such as Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani that are essentially processed municipal water. It's an unparalleled — and almost exclusively American — 'social phenomenon.' With journalistic zeal, Royte chronicles the questionable practices of Nestle-owned Poland Springs and documents the environmental impact of discarded plastic bottles, the carbon footprint of water shipped long distances and health concerns around the leaching of plastic compounds from bottles. Not all tap water is perfectly pure, writes Royte, still, 92% of the nation's 53,000 local water systems meet or exceed federal safety standards and 'it is the devil we know,' at least as good and often better than bottled water. This portrait of the science, commerce and politics of potable water is an entertaining and eye-opening narrative. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"[A] compelling story of how beverage companies have successfully persuaded Americans to spend more than $10 billion annually on a product that's available everywhere practically free of charge." Very Short List

"Readers will be surprised at the many facets of the story of bottled water, and the blend of narrative with historical fact keeps the book compelling and dynamic." Library Journal

"Bottlemania is eye-opening and informative; you will never look at water — either 'designer' or tap — in quite the same way. Royte demonstrates how everything is, in the end, truly connected." Elizabeth Kolbert

"Though [Royte] personally chooses not to support the bottled-water industry, she shines just as bright a light on the problems with tap-water production....Lively investigative journalism." Kirkus Reviews

"The facile answer is marketing, marketing and more marketing, but Elizabeth Royte goes much deeper into the drink, streaming trends cultural, economic, political and hydrological into an engaging investigation of an unexpectedly murky substance." Lisa Margonelli, NY Times Book Review

"Ingenious. Amiably, without haranguing or hyperventilating, this veteran environmental writer has produced what could be, assuming enough people read it, one of the year's most influential books." Boston Globe

"[A] timely, densely reported but also very readable and distressing examination of the way we drink." Abe Streep, San Francisco Chronicle

"This tautly paced volume more closely resembles a travel narrative than a tree-hugging jeremiad." Mark Coleman, Los Angeles Times

In this intelligent, eye-opening work of narrative journalism, Royte does for water what Eric Schlosser did for fast food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from nature to the supermarkets.

Elizabeth Royte has written for the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, and the New Yorker. She is the author of Garbage Land and The Tapir's Morning Bath.