IS A RIVER ALIVE? - MACFARLANE. ROBERT

A New York Times Bestseller

A #1 Sunday Times (UK) Bestseller

A New York Times "New Nonfiction to Read This Spring" Recommendation • A Guardian "Nonfiction to Look Forward To in 2025" Pick • A Washington Post "Book to Watch For" in 2025 • A Financial Times "What to Read in 2025" Selection

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