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TALK Book Discussion

Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains

TALK immerses you in powerful stories & new perspectives. Discuss with open-minded group in person or virtually (register for link). Sponsored by Humanities Kansas. Need a book? Email talk@tscpl.org.

Our TALK Book Discussion group meets on the third Wednesday of each month. In March we'll discuss Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains. Email Miranda at talk@tscpl.org to sign out a copy of the book or for more information. Register for Zoom link, or attend in person at the library.

More about Running Out

The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.

Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family lived as irrigation farmers and ranchers, to try to make sense of this vital resource and its loss. His search for water across the drying High Plains brings the reader face to face with the stark realities of industrial agriculture, eroding democratic norms, and surreal interpretations of a looming disaster. Yet the destination is far from predictable, as the book seeks to move beyond the words and genres through which destruction is often known. Instead, this journey into the morass of eradication offers a series of unexpected discoveries about what it means to inherit the troubled legacies of the past and how we can take responsibility for a more inclusive, sustainable future.

An urgent and unsettling meditation on environmental change, Running Out is a revelatory account of family, complicity, loss, and what it means to find your way back home.

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