Is a River Alive?

A New York Times Bestseller
Special Jury Citation for the Banff Mountain Books Prize
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize
An ABA Indie Next Pick
An Economist, New Yorker, and Guardian Best Book of the Year
A Time Must-Read Book of the Year
One of NPR’s “Books We Love” of the Year
A Washington Post Notable Work of the Year

“As beautiful as the rivers and the hope he’s describing.” ―Valorie Castellanos Clark, Los Angeles Times

From the best-selling author of Underland and "the great nature writer…of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), a revelatory book that transforms how we imagine rivers―and life itself.

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.

6 illustrations