At the heart of ‘Is a River Alive?’ is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings, who should be recognised as such in both imagination and law. Macfarlane takes the reader on a mind-expanding global journey into the history, futures, people and places of the ancient, urgent concept. Around the world, rivers are dying from pollution, drought and damming. But a powerful movement is also underway to recognize the lives and the rights of rivers, and to re-animate our relationships with these vast, mysterious presences whose landscapes we share. The young ‘rights of nature’ movement has lit up activists, artists, law-makers and politicians across six continents – and become the focus for revolutionary thinking about rivers in particular.