Is A River Alive Robert Macfarlane W. W. Norton & Company 2025

 Is the River Alive covers rivers on the North American and South American continents and the sub-continent of India. It begins with the evolution of a river, how they formed and the roles they played in a five page span of human history, their birth twelve thousand years ago and their struggle to survive today. Climate change, rising temperature and its threat to rivers--the Po, the Tigris, the Colorado River, the Elbe forced the author to ask the question, Is the River Alive? By asking that question, do we change our perception of rivers legally and politically; do we give thought to the contract that we have with nature; do we attempt to hear what the river is saying, the author asks? By calling them 'water bodies' we acknowledge their existence; by 'daylighting', we resurrect rivers that have been covered by asphalt or some other man-made material. In contrast, a dying river, the author defines as "one that does not reach the sea" (p. 18). A dying river is also one filled with sewage, that burns, that kills within its ecosystem, that has been disfigured, dammed.