Is a River Alive?

Name: Is a River Alive?
Price: 2.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.6 (544 reviews)
Author: Robert Macfarlane

by Robert Macfarlane

Nonfiction Memoir

4.6 (544)

4.6 stars from 544 reviews. Top 95% of Nonfiction books we track.

384 pages~6.4 hr readPublished by Penguin Books, LimitedPublished 2025-01-01

$2.9989% off peak

Last checked: May 16, 2026

Price history: $2.99 – $27.61

Buy now — this is the lowest price we've seen.

Price range: $2.99 – $27.61

Buy on Amazon - $2.99

0 readers are tracking this book's price

Fans of these authors will like this...

Robin Wall Kimmerer
Elizabeth Kolbert
Helen Macdonald

Fans of these books will like this...

Braiding Sweetgrass
The Sixth Extinction
Underland

Perfect for you if...

You care about environmental justice and want to understand how indigenous peoples and legal systems are actually recognising rivers as living entities.
You love lyrical, precise nature writing that treats landscape as character rather than backdrop.
You're drawn to books that blend personal memoir with reportage, where the author's own life becomes part of the investigation.

Maybe not for you if...

You want a practical guide to river conservation or environmental policy. This is philosophical and poetic, not instructional.
You prefer plot-driven narratives or tight narrative structures. This braids three journeys across different continents with a slower, meditative pace.
You're sceptical about granting rivers legal personhood and want counterarguments. Macfarlane is making a case, not debating one.

About this book

Robert Macfarlane explores the question of whether rivers are living beings deserving recognition in both imagination and law. The book combines travel writing, reportage, and natural history across three journeys: to cloud-forests and mountain streams in Ecuador threatened by mining, to polluted creeks and lagoons in India, and to wild rivers in Canada endangered by dams. Woven throughout is the story of a chalk stream near Macfarlane's own home. Macfarlane examines how rivers connect to human life and fate, drawing on the perspectives of various people and voices encountered during his travels. The work presents an exploration of rivers as living entities and considers what recognizing them as such might mean for both imagination and law.

Get the best deal every time

We track price drops, sale patterns, and predict when this book will go on offer next.

Price History

Kindle price over time. Green zones = periods when the book was free.

$2.99 – $27.61

Currently on sale at $2.99 — 89% off peak. Price has dropped 3 times over the last 18 months. Goes on sale roughly every 271 days. Typically stays discounted for 2 days.

Sales Rank

Amazon sales rank: lower number = better selling book. #1 is the bestseller.

Currently #257 in the Kindle store — a top-1,000 bestseller.

Rating & Reviews

Purple line = star rating over time. Blue area = total review count growth.

Currently 4.6★ from 544 reviews

Gaining approximately 43 new reviews per month. Steady word of mouth growth. Rating has dipped slightly from 5.0 to 4.6.

Sale Prediction

Actual Predicted

This book is currently discounted at $2.99. It typically returns to around $27.61.

Prices shown in USD from Amazon US. We continuously pull new data to improve tracking. If dates look old, it usually means there has been no significant change since the last data point.