In Praise of Floods

With the mid-semester cloud of grading and deadlines lifting a bit, I actually found time to do some quasi-pleasure reading this past week. I reading James C. Scott’s final book, In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings (2025). As someone who has lived next to a river for 20+ years (and an untamed one at that), I’ve developed an affinity for rivers. In fact, when I think about my archaeology work in the Mediterranean, my most recent two projects, in the Western Argolid along the Inachos River and in Polis on the Chrysochous River, both featured distinctive riverine landscapes. Scott’s book is short enough that you can read it without needing my review. I’ll share some comments, though. As one might expect from Scott, he argues that the state’s efforts to control the river and the state’s dependence on grains interact to create destructive regime that reverberates across the river’s diverse ecosystems and human communities. His main focus is the Ayeyarwady River in…