Synopses & Reviews
The 2007 Blue Planet Run, an unprecedented, nonstop around-the-world relay run with 20 participating runners, representing 13 countries, selected to represent the diversity of the world's population, as well as for their running capability and commitment to the cause. Each runner symbolically represents a locale that is either home to a successful Blue Planet Run Foundation funded water project or one that is still in need.
Blue Planet Run features today's most creative environmental writers and thinkers and addresses the issue of safe drinking water. Paul Hawken has contributed the final essay and is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author of the bestselling Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. Contributors include Fred Pearce, the author of When Rivers Run Dry and a former news editor at New Scientist; Diane Ackerman, poet and author of A Natural History of the Senses; Bill McKibben, an environmentalist and writer whose books include the ground breaking The End of NatureandThe Age of Missing Information; Michael Specter, author of The New Yorker essay The Last Drop: Confronting the Possibility of a Global Catastrophe and Mike Cerre an award winning broadcast journalist. Robert Redford has contributed the foreword.
Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World features over 250 photographs and graphics designed by the world's leading info-graphic artist, the award winning Nigel Holmes. Additional advisors and staff include Michael Malone, producer of PBS's New Heroes with Robert Redford; Stephen Petranek, former editor-in-chief of Discover Magazine; Phillip Moffitt, former editor and owner of Esquire Magazine and Mike Davis, former Director of Photography at the White House, editor at National Geographic and winner of the picture editor of the year.
Review
From The Flint Journal First EditionOK, I really hate to admit this, but there's no denying it: Blue Planet Run - The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World sounds like a noble but dirt-dry text on scholarly environmental issues. It's not just me. In fact, a co-worker walking past my desk took one quick glance at the book's plain white cover, muttered "boring" and kept on walking. But please, don't judge this book by its cover. Trust me on this. Just open the oversized volume to any page at all. You won't want to put it down. Blue Planet Run is a visually stunning tour de force by some of the world's top photojournalists, backed up by thought-provoking essays and profound commentaries on the many ways humanity is confronting the growing lack of a clean and plentiful water supply. The book's collection of more than 250 photographs are at once beautiful and haunting, enlightening and disturbing, inspiring and even, at times, amusing. From the cornfields of Nebraska to an oil-fouled Nigerian port, this group of talented artists and visionaries takes us on an amazing journey around the world. And despite its global scale, it is first and foremost a book about people, in a very intimate and individual sense. You'll meet Kenyan runner Emanuel Kibet; Las Vegas homeowner Joseph Cooper, who's replacing his backyard lawn with artificial turf; Imelda Carreon Valdozino and her mission to test for toxins in Mexico City's water supply. From the anonymous to the famous, young and old, rich and poor, their faces are all our faces, and their challenges belong to us all. Need another incentive? Buying this book isn't just a passive venture into eco-awareness. One hundred percent of the royalties from Blue Planet Run will be used to provide clean water to people around the world who desperately need it. Learning about a problem is the first step toward being part of the solution.
Synopsis
The Blue Planet Run Foundation is an organization dedicated to educating the public to the issue of safe drinking water around the globe. To draw attention to this cause, 20 runners were selected to represent the diversity of the worlds population and the Foundation-funded water project.
Synopsis
From the creators of the highly acclaimed
New York Times best-selling
Day in the Life and America 24/7 series, Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt,
Blue Planet Run provides readers with a fascinating and thought-provoking look at the water problems facing humanity on every continent, as well as some of the hopeful solutions and courageous “water heroes” focused on alleviating this crisis.
The large-format volume features more than 250 photographs by the world’s top photojournalists, illustrations by leading infographic artist Nigel Holmes, and provocative essays by Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses), environmental leaders Paul Hawken and Bill McKibben, journalists Michael Specter and Jeffrey Rothfeder, Emmy Award-winning TV broadcaster Mike Cerre, Michael Malone, of ABC News and inventor Dean Kamen (the Segway scooter). Advisors and staff include Phillip Moffitt, former editor and owner of Esquire magazine and Stephen Petranek, former editor-in-chief of Discover magazine.
Blue Planet Run highlights the vital contributions of nonprofits around the world, including the groundbreaking work of the Blue Planet Run Foundation, which seeks to provide safe drinking water to 200 million people by 2027. The book includes coverage of the 2007 Blue Planet Run, an unprecedented, non-stop, around-the-world relay race designed as a wake-up call to the world. Twenty-one runners, representing 13 countries, began the race on June 1, 2007, at the United Nations and concluded in New York City on September 4, 2007, having circled the Earth in just 95 days while running over 15,000 miles across 16 countries in Europe, Asia and North America.
Synopsis
Blue Planet Run provides readers with an extraordinary look at the water problems facing humanity and some of the hopeful solutions being pursued by large and small companies, but entrepreneurs and activists, and by nongovernmental organizations and foundations. By the end of the book, readers are left to form their own conclusions as to whether or how the human race is capable of taking the steps necessary to solve this global crisis before it's too late.
Blue Planet Run is two books in one: First, it is about an extraordinary 15,000-mile relay race - the longest relay race in human history - in which 20 athletes spent 95 days running around the globe to spread awareness of the world's water crisis. Secondly, it is a showcase of powerful, inspiring, disturbing and hopeful images captured by leading photojournalists around the world who documented the human face of the crisis and its possible solutions. The result of these two parallel projects is the book you hold in your hands.
One hundred percent of the royalties from this book will be used to provide clean water to people around the world who desperately need it.