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Is a River Alive?
Paperback
Publisher Price: $19.99
ISBN13: 9781324130734
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: Jun 9 2026
Pages: 384
Weight: 0.67
Height: 0.95 Width: 5.51 Depth: 8.27
Language: English
Hailed in the New York Times as a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler, Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of 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, stories, 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 respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane's house, a stream who flows through his own years and days.
Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers--and always has.
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