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Is a River Alive?
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About This Book
The renowned nature writer and author of the best-selling author of Underland delivers a revelatory book that transforms how we look at the natural world—and life itself. Hailed as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler" (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane's house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane's dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.
Reviews
"Macfarlane skillfully braids his immersive travel writing with illuminating historical background, all told in lithe prose."
"Engages imaginatively with important debates and makes a compelling case that understanding the 'aliveness' of rivers should matter to us all."
"Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative."
"Nature writing has been criticized for being overly dry, but Macfarlane's is anything but: He pours down unusual verbs, exhaustingly flaunting his superior attention and word choice ..."
"By exploring four extraordinary bodies of water and the people and laws aiming to protect them, Macfarlane examines a question whose time has come, whether we like it or not ..."
"The result is a ravishing and enlightening inquiry shaped by hydropoetics and a deeply considered commitment to rejuvenating, cherishing, and protecting rivers and all of nature."
"The revelations in this passionate book will make that quiet, common experience even more life-giving."
"Macfarlane places the reader in immersive contact with the nature we have been lulled and dulled into regarding as mere backdrop to human activity ..."
"Macfarlane weaves in plenty of factual information, including vivid passages on the biodiversity of cloud forests and the destruction caused by metal mining."
"Over the past two decades, the Cambridge professor of literature and environmental humanities has emerged as one of the world's pre-eminent nature writers ..."
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