Is a River Alive?

If rivers can die—we've all seen that they can—shouldn't that also mean that rivers are alive? Macfarlane's newest book is his most pointedly provocative, adding an activist's urgency to his usual, miraculous attention to nature, love for language, and charismatic generosity toward the best of his fellow humans. In this participatory study of living waterways, almost giddy with hope and the possibility of despair, you'll meet four river systems, in the cloudforests of Ecuador, the polluted flatlands of India, the wild, yet-undammed reaches of Quebec, and Macfarlane's home territory of Cambridge, and you'll also get to know some of the larger-than-life people who love and try to protect them. In a time when we pay particular attention to pronouns, you'll note the one he insists on using for each river: not "it," but "who."