History is my passion as well as my profession. I love a good story! When I was teaching courses in environmental history and women’s history, I kept noticing the intriguing intersections, which inspired me to write Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers. Most of my work focuses on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (1877-1920) and includes two award-winning biographies, Fighting Bob La Follette and Belle La Follette Progressive Era Reformer. I’m also the co-editor of A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and have written dozens of op-eds and give public talks (some of which can be found in the C-SPAN online library and on YouTube).
This is a classic by a leader in the field. It’s a hefty tome combining philosophy, economics, and history, but is well worth the time and energy required. Worster emphasizes that lack of water resources is a massive problem for the modern American West, necessitating increasingly complex and far-reaching irrigation systems that come at high social and economic costs. The result is an “empire” whose power is based on who controls the water vital to the urban, suburban, and rural life of the hydraulic west.
Donald Worster examines the development history of the American West, identifying the elite of technology and wealth who have controlled its most essential resource: water.
I always wanted to be a writer but never thought I’d become a travel writer. And like many British teenagers, I also had a passion for the USA – its movies, its music, its writers – but never imagined I would end up living in Arizona. I’ve now traveled in the US widely and understand why its landscapes, its people, and its culture have produced so much good travel writing. It’s a country that’s inspiring and surprising in equal measure, ever-changing, vast, and even though I didn’t grow up there it certainly made me who I am.
Sometimes it takes an outsider to see deeper into a country. Raban was a respected English novelist and critic when he moved to the USA and settled there – something I would later do myself. He proceeded to produce a series of brilliantly vivid travel books about his new homeland, of which this was the first. Avoiding the inevitable road trip (though he did those later), he takes a motorboat for a solo journey down the Mississippi River. Long periods alone allow him the chance to reflect on the river, nature, and the USA, but he also has lively encounters with the people who live by the river, revealing their passions and their pains.
'Jonathan Raban is one of the world's greatest living travel writers.' William Dalrymple
'The best book of travel ever written by an Englishman about the United States' Jan Morris, Independent
Navigating the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans, Raban opens himself to experience the river in all her turbulent and unpredictable old glory. Going wherever the current takes him, he joins a coon-hunt in Savana, falls for a girl in St Louis, worships with black Baptists in Memphis, hangs out with the housewives of Pemiscot and the hog-king of Dubuque. Through tears of laughter, we are led into the…
I traveled the length of the Nile River from source to sea through Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt to write a book that the Daily Beast called "a masterful narrative of investigative reportage, travel writing, and contemporary history," and that the Village Voice named to its ten best books of the year.
Water expert, academic, and documentary filmmaker Terje Tvedt fell hard for the Nile decades ago. His third book on the life-giving river is an expert weaver's tapestry of history, ecology, and politics on the Nile.
"[A] vivid travelogue." New Statesman
"Has much to offer." The Spectator
"Sparks the imagination." BBC History Magazine
"A fascinating study." BBC History Revealed Magazine
"Essential reading." All About History
"Valiant, valuable and entertaining." Times Literary Supplement
The greatest river in the world has a long and fascinating history. Professor Terje Tvedt, one of the world's leading experts on the history of waterways, travels upstream along the river's mouth to its sources. The result is a travelogue through 5000 years and 11 countries, from the Mediterranean to Central Africa. This is the fascinating story of the immense economic, political and mythical…
I'm a Belgian illustrator and author of children's books. My mother works in a library so I was constantly in contact with books, especially children's books. Stories with beautiful pictures were always a big fascination of mine. Drawing keeps me looking for stories and stories keep me drawing. Everything is an inspiration: a funny moment, a good conversation, or just life. In my university, I renewed my passion for children's books thanks to my teacher Kris, also a children's book illustrator. In my final school years I got the chance to work with one of the best publishers in Belgium: De Eenhoorn (the unicorn) they gave me the chance to grow and...tell stories.
Once again a wordless picture book. But the style of graphic and college art just blew my away. You'll get lost in this one. Everything seems possible and you'll want to go to the places he depicts. Without using words you'll want to discover how the story ends.
1
author picked
A River
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
5,
6,
7, and
8.
What is this book about?
A beautiful geographical story with lush landscapes and poetic text from an award-winning Australian illustrator. A River follows on from Marc Martin's incredible A Forest - winner of the 2013 Crichton Children's Illustration Award.
There is a river outside my window. Where will it take me?
So begins an imaginary journey from the city to the sea. From factories to farmlands, freeways to forest, each new landscape is explored through stunning illustrations and poetic text from this award-winning picture-book creator.
As a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand, I’ve always been interested in social justice and human rights, and my own writing explores such issues, including who holds the power and who exerts the control. By writing about real-world issues in a speculative future, it allows us to peel back the layers of conditioning and look at ourselves and our actions through the eyes of an outsider – which forces us to examine our best and worst human traits. I love the way speculative fiction can do this, and I love that it challenges us to do better.
Though not packaged as YA, I think it sits well here. It’s speculative cli-fi, imagining an Aotearoa New Zealand ravaged by climate change. Steeped with Māori references, it’s a rollicking good yarn with a serious undertow and questions about how we care (and don’t care) for our environment, and the things that join and divide us.
In a radically changed Aotearoa New Zealand, Van's life in the swamp is hazardous. Sheltered by Rau and Matewai, he mines plastic and trades to survive. When a young visitor summons him to the fenced settlement on the hill, he is offered a new and frightening responsibility-a perilous inland journey that leads to a tense confrontation and the prospect of a rebuilt world.
`Patchett's is an extraordinary imaginative achievement: an unsettlingly strange, and fully realised, narrative situation and world. I read The Burning River experiencing a mixture of intellectual exhilaration and emotional agitation of an intensity fiction has not produced…
I love rivers. The flow of water gives a sense of timelessness, the reflection of light from the surface brightens the colours on the banks and the wider stretches make a feeling of space. I have messed about in boats all my life and I am happiest on inland waterways. What I enjoyed as recreation alongside a medical career has grown into a vocation in my retirement. The more people who know about our beautiful rivers, the better the chances that we can protect them from exploitation and carelessness.
This book was sponsored by the National Trust and has the high quality that one expects of that organisation.
It is a very readable account of the geology and geography of rivers. It has helped me to understand what I see when I look at rivers and it encourages me to go to new places to learn more. Although it was written nearly 40 years ago, it is very relevant to the present times when rivers in many countries suffer from mismanagement of the environment.
The lovely photographs show how much there is that is worth better care.
I'm an archaeologist that is primarily interested in understanding ancient history of water. I have conducted fieldwork in China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. In my spare time, I enjoy writing novels (though never published any yet). This 24 Hours in Ancient China is a trial from this hobbit. I first became fascinated by Han China through a remarkable excavation at the Sanyangzhuang site where an almost intact Han-Dynasty farming village was preserved due to a Yellow River flood. Houses, mills, farming fields, and many other artefacts were revealed through the excavation. Subsequently, I was fortunate to be involved in some collaborative research on the environment and society of Han China.
Long being considered the ‘mother river’ of the Chinese civilization, the Yellow River has attracted intensive scientific research in the past decades. In this new book, Ruth Mostern aims to provide a new look of this old river with a special focus on how ancient people along the river from very early period onwards had started systematic engineering the river for various purposes. Some of the aspects discussed by Mostern, such as the frequency of Yellow River floods and their social ramifications, are also relevant to understand some of the stories that I articulated in my own book.
A three-thousand-year history of China's Yellow River and the legacy of interactions between humans and the natural landscape
"No other scholar has produced such a systematic, comprehensive account of the long-term changes in the river's function and structure. I consider it to be the definitive work on the topic of the Yellow River to date."-Peter C. Perdue, author of China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia
From Neolithic times to the present day, the Yellow River and its watershed have both shaped and been shaped by human society. Using the Yellow River to illustrate the long-term effects of…
I expect that the folks at Shepherd.com approached me as a picture book author, since I’m the author of eleven picture books, including the four books of the Vampirina Ballerina series, which were adapted into the Disney Junior hit series Vampirina. But my thoughts and ideas about friendship and community really stem from once having been a child myself and from being a parent of four children, each of whom approached the roller coaster ride of childhood friendship in their unique ways. I was always happy to help them find answers in a book, even when those answers involved more, and deeper, questions.
After Bear falls into a river, which doesn’t know it’s a river, he’s joined by a series of forest friends, each of whom add to and enhances the group’s adventure until at the end, they have become friends in the community, all thanks to Bear’s misstep. The art is stunning, especially the use of color, which begins drably in the endpapers and ends up stunningly bright and light-filled. A Caldecott Honor book.
From award-winning author Richard T. Morris and bestselling illustrator LeUyen Pham comes a cheerful and action-packed adventure about the importance of friendship and community.
Once there was a river flowing through a forest. The river didn't know it was capable of adventures until a big bear came along. But adventures aren't any fun by yourself, and so enters Froggy, Turtles, Beaver, Racoons, and Duck.
These very different animals take off downstream, but they didn't know they needed one another until thankfully, the river came along.
This hilarious picture book and heartfelt message celebrates the joy and fun that's in store…
I am what you might call an “armchair explorer.” I love reading about new places and parts of the world. I am fascinated by the history of communities. Places are not just locations; they are ideas formed by the stories that people tell about them. I love novels where I can get a true sense of a place and time. This passion led me to a love for folklore and legend. Nothing can provide a sense of a place better than its folklore. When I wrote Intercession, one of my main goals was to create a place and people that could be known through the stories they tell each other.
Set in a small, coastal Oregon town, this lyrical novel follows an intimate cast of characters as the history and lore of their town intertwines with their lives. Each character has their own struggles and joys and their own story to tell.
The cast includes two aging best friends at the Public Works Department, a twelve-year-old boy who rides bikes and reads Irish history, a doctor who talks little but smokes often, and a philosophizing crow who hangs out with a mechanic. Doyle expresses such love and empathy for his characters.
To Doyle, everything matters: each character, each story, every tree, every choice. It’s the most beautiful novel I’ve ever read.
Like Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Brian Doyle's stunning fiction debut brings a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people.
In a small town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a…
I've been passionate about and engaged with rivers ever since growing up along streams in the Appalachian foothills of Pennsylvania. Now living in Oregon, I'm the author and photographer of 30 books about rivers, the environment, and adventure travel. My books include a history of river conservation, a primer on modern-day river issues, profiles of great rivers from the Youghiogheny in the East to the Snake and Columbia in the West, guidebooks, and photo essays. I've received the Ansel Adams Photography Award from the Sierra Club, the Communicator of the Year Award from the National Wildlife Federation, the Lifetime Achievement Award from American Rivers, a "paddler of the century" recognition from Paddler magazine, and numerous book honors.
Biologist Lichatowich draws on his lifetime of experience studying and working with fisheries to reveal both the persisting wonder and the ongoing shortcomings of fish-and-wildlife agencies' mismanagement of salmon that migrate up our rivers to spawn and then return to the ocean for most of their life cycles. Striking to the heart of a critical but under-recognized issue affecting rivers today, he explains why fish hatcheries that were sold to the public as a way of compensating for fish-killing dams have actually harmed wild fish further, and he urges all who are responsible to avert an ongoing tragedy.
Explores the roots and evolution of the salmon crisis in the Pacific Northwest. The author describes the evolutionary history of the salmon as well as the geological history of the Pacific Northwest, before considering the multitude of factors, including historical, social, scientific and cultural, which have led to the salmon's decline. The book includes a clinical and critical assessment of why the numerous restoration efforts have failed. The book exposes the myths that have guided recent human-salmon interactions and explains the difficult choices facing the region, offering an insight into this chapter of America's environmental history.
