"Brilliantly conceived....[A] tour de force in historical writing."—Ian Kershaw

David Blackbourn tells the story of how the German people transformed their landscape over 250 years from a waterlogged swampland into one of the most powerful countries in the Western world. His account, in which he shows how Germans set out to "conquer" that most fundamental natural element, water, brings together politics, culture, economics, and ecology in a daring work of total history.