Two Rivers Entangled: An Ecological History of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Twentieth Century

During the twentieth century, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers underwent a profound physical transformation, one that mirrored the region's political shift from imperial rule to nation—state. Here, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey took shape in the wake of the Ottoman Empire, and the two rivers became sites of economic development planning and large—scale environmental engineering. It is a modern conceit that industrial, technological societies transcend ecological change, that technology and ecology...