The Lived Nile

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"The Lived Nile offers a creative and smart account of a river and a nation, fluidly braiding together a history of labor, disease, and political economy, brimming with keen insight and filled with unexpected turns."-Gregg Mitman, University of Wisconsin-Madison "The Lived Nile offers a highly original synthesis of environmental and political history. Jennifer Derr shows how the remaking of the Nile River in the colonial period remade the very bodies of the country's political subjects."-Timothy Mitchell, Columbia University "A brilliant book, The Lived Nile captures the complexities and unintended consequences of experts intervening in a river's flow-and the displaced and diseased bodies that result-in a most compelling story. This is history at its best."-Beth Baron, author of The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood "The Nile River has sustained Egypt's material economy for millennia, a role Derr argues has continued into the colonial era, though subject to external considerations. Egypt's integration into the British imperial economy as a producer of sugar and cotton, combined with the poverty of its landowning class, reshaped the material culture of the river. Highly recommended."-S. L. Smith, CHOICE "Jennifer Derr has written an innovative and well researched study....The book is concise, well organized, and a pleasure to read. It will interest medical historians and geographers as well as specialists in Egyptian and African history. The illustrations are well selected, and the bibliography is useful. With a massive new dam rising on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, the book could not be timelier."-Nancy E. Gallagher, Bulletin of the History of Medicine "Situated at the intersection of the history of science, the history of medicine, and the history of the body, as well as environmental history and the history of technology, The Lived Nile stands out for the way it brings science and technology studies into conversation with the social and political history of the Middle East. This is an important undertaking, and a great deal of work still remains to be done before our field truly reflects what a global phenomenon the practice of science became in the modern world. Derr's book offers a timely contribution in this regard, bringing archival depth and conceptual rigor to her study of a part of the world that deserves far more attention among science studies scholars. This, in addition to its empirical richness and analytical rigor, should make it required reading for scholars interested in the global history of science, the relationship between science and capitalism, and the intersection between knowledge, the environment, and the state."-Lukas Rieppel, Brown University, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society