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Rating: 
Summary: Be scared. Be very scared.
Review: Barker's AND THE WATERS TURNED TO BLOOD is a whooping good, well-told true story of thoughtful, good-natured people being screwed by egomanical, backside-covering bureaucrats and scientists who certain reviewers on-line would rather believe aren't really such bad guys. I, for one, am wholly convinced by Barker's careful investigation and analysis and am wholly sympathetic to the obvious Good Guys in this book. To what degree were everyday Germans responsible for the Nazi Holocaust? Similarly, to what degree are the recalcitrant American media responsible for not covering wildly important stories such as the Pfiesteria plague, wholly preventable if greedy industries were forced to comply with precepts of human decency by being fined heavily for polluting? (Only a self-interested beaureacratic bimbo would deny the link between industrial pollution and the explosion of Pfiesteria blooms.) Last week the Chesapeake Bay area was decimated by fishkills and Pfiesteria. Next week it will be some place else. Meanwhile, the media largely ignores the topic to avoid "mass hysteria" and to keep the profits flowing. To what degree are you, dear reader, responsible for not learning more about Pfiesteria by reading this book and then by making some irate phone calls and writing some irate letters because you'd enjoy a healthy America for future generations? Our greatest living novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, suggests in an essay that carved on a Grand Canyon wall in great big letters for the flying-saucer people who arrive in a hundred years and find a dead planet with no people should be these messages: "WE PROBABLY COULD HAVE SAVED OURSELVES BUT WERE TOO DAMNED LAZY TO TRY VERY HARD. AND TOO DAMNED CHEAP." Rodney Barker's superlative book certainly supports this idea. Richard Rhodes' DEADLY FEASTS, about the American Med-Cow disease cover-up, also supports Vonnegut's idea: we are too lazy and cheap to save ourselves
Rating:
Summary: And the waters turned to blood
Review: Overall we found the book intersting. The real life experiences people had with pfiesteria were fascinating, but scary. The fpiesteria problem is around where we live so we found the book telling us the truth about places we have visited before. The last couple of chapters focused a lot on the politics of the North Carolina government and we found that as the least interesting part of the book. We were shocked by the attempt of NC to cover up the obvious problems being caused by pfiesteria. The incident after hurricane Fran was also amusing and added humor to this serious themed novel.
Rating: 
Summary: And the Waters Turned to Blood
Review: Rodney Barker did an excellent job at enlightening his readers of the dangers of pollution, the devastating effects of Pfiesteria, and the power of a political machine. The tale developes the story of one dedicated scientists fighting to make the world aware of the rise of a toxic dinoflagellate. A professor at North Carolina State University, Dr. JoAnn Burkholder never imagined being presented with such a massive problem on her hands. After identifying the morphing dinoflagellate as Pfiesteria piscicida, Burkholder realized that her troubles would not stop at trying to identify characteristics of the organism; Burkkholder's biggest obstacle was trying to gain support for research from her peers, concerned citizens, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Management. Eventually, fellow colleagues would believe her claim but the government only saw Burkholder as an annoyance needed to be silenced. At the same time, Pfiesteria was reeking havoc with numerous fish kills and reports of human symptoms including short-term memory loss and severe mood swings.
Rating: 
Summary: And The Waters Turned To Blood
Review: this book is about this woman Dr. Burkholder who discovered pfiesteria. we enjoyed this book because it not only told us pfiesteria, it also told us about her personnel reviwe and made the book interesting.
things that we did not like about the book was towards the end , it all came down to politics.
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