Blue Planet Run
By Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt

This giant book with amazing photos is part of a project founded by Jin Zidell, a philanthropist and environmentalist who wants as many people as possible to have clean drinking water. To raise awareness for the cause, he organized the Blue Planet Run (a 95-day relay race around the world) and asked 40 photojournalists to chronicle the global water crisis. The images—one of a person walking miles to get clean water—are heart-wrenching, but they're also inspiring. As one of the essayists writes, we don't know how to cure cancer yet, but we do know how to purify water. We have the technology, and it can be implemented in cheap ways. In one village, for instance, kids play on a merry-go-round that generates the energy to pump water out of the ground. I also love that the book is carbon neutral, and 100 percent of its profits go to the Blue Planet Run Foundation.
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