The Great Lakes hold more than 20% of the world's fresh water and support livelihoods and leisure for many of the 37 million people who live in the Great Lakes basin. Poised just miles away, a fish stands ready to challenge this way of life for those living in Chicago and beyond. As Asian carp threaten to enter the Great Lakes via a man-made connection that linked the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River at the turn of the last century, Carp: A Four Letter Word examines the relationship between the water, the fish, the locks, the food, the politics, the economics and a decades-old water rights dispute.