Title: Is a River Alive?
Author: Robert Macfarlane
Publisher: WW Norton & Company 2025
Genre: Nonfiction - Science
Pages: 384
Rating: 4/5 stars
Reading Challenges: Nonfiction Reader
Where I Got It: Library
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.
The second Macfarlane book I’ve read, and while it’s not quite as good as Underland, it’s still an engaging piece of nonfiction science writing. This one is about rivers (of course given the title). He visits three river systems to try to understand the importance of rivers and their place in our world. I enjoyed the sections where he dive into the science behind the different rivers. The three chosen are vastly different and it was nice to dive into those differences scientifically. I loved learning about water systems and how they recycle and reuse the material around them. I enjoyed the history of each river system and learning how humans have altered those systems. Where the book started to fall apart were the longer sections at each section’s beginning where he spends more time telling you the history of a specific person. I’m sure they are all lovely people, but I wanted to get to the science and the nature. Overall, it’s a good read connecting humans and nature. I do want to keep picking up books by Macfarlane to sprinkle into my reading.
Next up on the TBR pile:
