Robert McFarlane wows again with prose as lush and vibrant as the ecosystems he yearns to protect. “Is a River Alive?”  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2025) explores the decimation of our earth’s waterways, the fight for the personhood of rivers, and the differential demise of rivers in Ecuador, Canada, and India through McFarlane’s well-versed lens.

The survival of the “River of the Cedars” in Ecuador is at risk due to mining, while the rivers flowing through Chennai, India, are at heightened risk due to escalating pollution. The Magpie River at the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada is suffering due to dams. Human-made demolition and pollution have led to soaring environmental degradation.

Perhaps it’s age or the rapid pace of climate change, but I don’t doubt the aliveness of rivers. A personal highlight of McFarlane’s new book is his elucidation of the Te Awa Tupua Act (March 20, 2017) in Wellington, New Zealand. The Whanganui River is alive and recognized as an ancestor of the Whanganui tribe. Additionally, the river is identified as a legal person with rights to representation and to exist unpolluted.

Fans of Barry Lopez, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bill Bryson, Annie Proulx, and Barbara Kingsolver should also enjoy “Is a River Alive?”

Thank you to Robert McFarlane, W.W. Norton & Company, and NetGalley for the eARC!

Robert Macfarlane is excellent at blending science, history and what it is like to walk the land while considering both. In this story, "Is a River Alive," he once again takes a huge topic and makes it approachable and fascinating. I finished feeling like I had learned a lot about the science and history of rivers, but also what it might have felt like to stand next to them as they formed, grew and changed over eons.
Of course, like all nature writing, the topic leads to some depressing and heavy topics: what have humans done that has hurt these rivers and their surroundings, and what can be done to make people aware of the great damage done and why it matters. Macfarlane addresses these issues in his usual way - with an urgentness that is wound into the beautiful prose of his writing.
Macfarlane has shown once again why he is one of the best nature writers for our time.

Having read all of Robert Macfarlane’s books and enjoyed them, this may be his most serious book yet. A defence of rivers in a society that has used and abused them using his own adventures, personal experience and case studies. It is far more entertaining than that makes it sound. It reads only as he writes. Exceptional.