“A remarkable tour de force, a definitive history of the science of hydrology as applied to the Nile, whose annual flows can produce acute drought or disastrous floods, and on whose waters the peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and parts of Ethiopia and Uganda depend. Collins, a master in his analysis, makes clear that the decisive forces in his complex story were, and are, political. Engineers from Britain, Egypt, and the Sudan worked in a context of internal and international rivalries and of brutal civil wars.
“The book is also a study in ecology and devotes a good deal of attention to the effects of great engineering schemes on people, animals, and vegetation near and far from the dams and canals. A well-documented study.”
— Choice