Is a River Alive presents a journey through three extraordinary rivers, located in wilderness Ecuador, wilderness Quebec, and urban India. Macfarlane explores how important these rivers are in the lives of people and ecosystems. He writes stunning portraits of the rivers users and protectors. He magnificently depicts the remarkable ecological "lives" of the rivers; their moods and seasons, their narratives and histories. In so doing, he raises questions about what it means to be sentient and why a redefinition of natural rights is essential for ecological survival, political activism, and environmental learning. MacFarlane is an evocative writer, filled with compassion, wisdom, and insight.
From celebrated writer Robert Macfarlane comes this brilliant, perspective-shifting new book - which answers a resounding yes to the question of its title.
At its heart is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings - who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Is a River Alive? takes the reader on an exhilarating exploration of the past, present and futures of this ancient, urgent concept.
The book flows first to northern Ecuador, where a miraculous cloud-forest and its rivers are threatened by goldmining.
The Book of Records portrays a surreal climate change future where refugees are living in a transitional community waiting for their next journey. The young woman protagonist (Lina) has access to three books, each portraying an important historical figure who lived in exile—Hannah Arendt, Baruch Spinoza, and Du Fu—covering distinct periods of human upheaval. The novel juxtaposes those stories with the Lina's growing intellectual and emotional development, providing her with the ballast to confront her family's past and her own future. These convergent "records" are evocative of contemporary times and urgently pertinent. The writing is lovely, wonderfully descriptive, and emotionally resonant.
Why did people, who lived so briefly in this universe, contain so much time?
Lina and her ailing father have taken refuge at an enclave called the Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions, among them three volumes from The Great Lives of Voyagers encyclopaedia series.
In this mysterious and shape-shifting building, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her unusual neighbours: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China, and through their stories, she comes to understand the role of…
Hannah Arendt was a deeply influential political philosopher who wrote cogently about freedom, history, civic life, democracy, and totalitarianism. Most importantly, she wrote about personal action and collective responsibility for responsible and ethical citizenship. Her philosophy was born out of her challenges as a refugee, fleeing Germany for the United States, and the extraordinary intellectual community intrinsic to her life. Lyndsey Stonebridge covers this ground with a deeply personal non-linear biographical portrait that directly describes Arendt's impact on her thinking. She shows how Arendt's political philosophy, historical inquiry and life experience provides wisdom for these times, prescribing thoughtful reflection and action. If you want a better understanding of how to live responsibly in challenging times, there is no better guide.
Why environmental learning is crucial for understanding the connected challenges of climate justice, tribalism, inequity, democracy, and human flourishing.
How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time—migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy—connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.
Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to navigate the Anthropocene's rapid pace of change without further separating psyche from biosphere; why we should understand migration both ecologically and culturally; how to achieve constructive connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as educational explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.
