Results by title

95 books match the query 'Rivers' and 21 start with t

cover of Tears for Crocodilia: Evolution, Ecology, and the Disappearance of One of the World's Most Ancient Animals

Tears for Crocodilia

Evolution, Ecology, and the Disappearance of One of the World's Most Ancient Animals

Zach Fitzner

Westholme Publishing, 2025

Seventy million years ago in what would become North America, a monstrous thirty-five-foot-long Cretaceous crocodile lurked on a marshy riverbank. Springing suddenly, its huge jaws trapped and crushed a juvenile hadrosaur. Today, the remains of that ancient crocodile are being painstakingly reconstructed in Colorado, where naturalist Zach Fitzner continues his life-long fascination with this amazing animal family. 

In Tears for Crocodilia: Evolution, Ecology, and the Disappearance of One of the World’s Most Ancient Animals, Fitzner tracks the evolution of crocodilians from prehistoric predators to modern endangered wildlife, using his own experiences with these reptiles as a lens to understanding wildlife conservation and our relationship with the natural world. Traveling the world to interact with crocodiles, from observing alligators in a wildlife refuge in Texas and paddling a canoe in the Everglades searching for crocodiles to trekking the jungles in Nepal to find endangered gharials, the author expresses a wonder in exploring these diverse ecosystems, making a connection between crocodilians and the lands they live in. As the story follows crocodilians, it also illuminates their often complicated relationship with humans, from crocodile cults in ancient Egypt to American alligators living on golf courses. Fitzner also closely examines the dark side of this relationship, including habitat destruction and poaching as well as the mechanistic view of traditional conservation that turns these magnificent animals into agricultural products. Tears for Crocodilia delves deeply into issues of wildlife conservation, ethics, and how we can coexist with other creatures. It is also a tribute to a magnificent group of animals, survivors from the age of dinosaurs. 

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cover of The Bark River Chronicles: Stories from a Wisconsin Watershed

The Bark River Chronicles

Stories from a Wisconsin Watershed

Milton J. Bates

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2012

The Bark River valley in southeastern Wisconsin is a microcosm of the state's - indeed, of the Great Lakes region's - natural and human history. "The Bark River Chronicles" reports one couple's journey by canoe from the river's headwaters to its confluence with the Rock River and several miles farther downstream to Lake Koshkonong. Along the way, it tells the stories of Ice Age glaciation, the effigy mound builders, the Black Hawk War, early settlement and the development of waterpower sites, and recent efforts to remove old dams and mitigate the damage done by water pollution and invasive species.
Along with these big stories, the book recounts dozens of little stories associated with sites along the river. The winter ice harvest, grain milling technology, a key supreme court decision regarding toxic waste disposal, a small-town circus, a scheme to link the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River by canal, the murder of a Chicago mobster, controversies over race and social class in Waukesha County's lake country, community efforts to clean up the river and restore a marsh, visits to places associated with the work of important Wisconsin writers - these and many other stories belong to the Bark River chronicles.

For the two voyageurs who paddle the length of the Bark, it is a journey of rediscovery and exploration. As they glide through marshes, woods, farmland, and cities, they acquire not only historical and environmental knowledge but also a renewed sense of the place in which they live. Maps and historical photographs help the reader share their experience.

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cover of The Battle for the Buffalo River: The Story of America's First National River

The Battle for the Buffalo River

The Story of America's First National River

Neil Compton

University of Arkansas Press, 2010

Under the auspices of the 1938 Flood Control Act, the U.S. Corps of Engineers began to pursue an aggressive dam-building campaign. A grateful public generally lauded their efforts, but when they turned their attention to Arkansas’s Buffalo River, the vocal opposition their proposed projects generated dumbfounded them. Never before had anyone challenged the Corps’s assumption that damming a river was an improvement. Led by Neil Compton, a physician in Bentonville, Arkansas, a group of area conservationists formed the Ozark Society to join the battle for the Buffalo. This book is the account of this decade-long struggle that drew in such political figures as supreme court justice William O. Douglas, Senator J. William Fulbright, and Governor Orval Faubus. The battle finally ended in 1972 with President Richard Nixon’s designation of the Buffalo as the first national river. Drawing on hundreds of personal letters, photographs, maps, newspaper articles, and reminiscences, Compton’s lively book details the trials, gains, setbacks, and ultimate triumph in one of the first major skirmishes between environmentalists and developers.
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cover of The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History

The Chicago River

A Natural and Unnatural History

Libby Hill

Southern Illinois University Press, 2019

In this social and ecological account of the Chicago River, Libby Hill tells the story of how a sluggish waterway emptying into Lake Michigan became central to the creation of Chicago as a major metropolis and transportation hub. 

This widely acclaimed volume weaves the perspectives of science, engineering, commerce, politics, economics, and the natural world into a chronicle of the river from its earliest geologic history through its repeated adaptations to the city that grew up around it. While explaining the river’s role in massive public works, such as drainage and straightening, designed to address the infrastructure needs of a growing population, Hill focuses on the synergy between the river and the people of greater Chicago, whether they be the tribal cultures that occupied the land after glacial retreat, the first European inhabitants, or more recent residents.

In the first edition, Hill brought together years of original research and the contributions of dozens of experts to tell the Chicago River’s story up until 2000. This revised edition features discussions of disinfection, Asian carp, green strategies, the evolution of the Chicago Riverwalk, and the river’s rejuvenation. It also explores how earlier solutions to problems challenge today’s engineers, architects, environmentalists, and public policy agencies as they address contemporary issues. 

Revealing the river to be a microcosm of the uneasy relationship between nature and civilization, The Chicago River offers the tools and knowledge for the city’s residents to be champions on the river’s behalf.
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cover of The Chicago River: An Illustrated History and Guide to the River and Its Waterways, Second Edition

The Chicago River

An Illustrated History and Guide to the River and Its Waterways, Second Edition

David M. Solzman

University of Chicago Press, 2006

“The river has seen it all, done it all, carried it all,” writes David Solzman. “Its current whispers of the past even as it rushes into the future. Those who know the river and its connected streams know Chicago in an elemental way. In a strong sense, the river is Chicago. Follow the river and travel into the soul of the city.”

The river is indeed the soul of the city—it runs through the heart of downtown, and it is a vehicle for both pleasure and the industry that keeps Chicago humming. With The Chicago River, Solzman has succeeded in writing an encyclopedic work—at once guidebook and history—that explores the river’s physical character and natural history. Examining the river’s past, contemplating its present, and forecasting its future, Solzman draws on his unparalleled knowledge to point out places of scientific and historic interest—involving everything from infamous murder cases to invasive zebra mussels. The book’s 200 photographs and maps perfectly complement Solzman’s vivid prose, leading readers on a visual journey as sinuous as the river it celebrates—a journey interspersed with plenty of river lore, facts, and literary quotations. 

Solzman, a veteran Chicago River tour guide, has also compiled a diverse collection of easy and enjoyable tours for anyone who wants to experience the river by foot, boat, canoe, or car. And he provides an appendix that lists river-related organizations, museums, tours, and riverfront restaurants and clubs. 

With practical tips, evocative language, and an astonishing array of anecdotes, TheChicago River is the most comprehensive guide to the river and its waterways, the perfect companion for everyone from the active river enthusiast to the armchair traveler.
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cover of The Chippewa: Biography of a Wisconsin Waterway

The Chippewa

Biography of a Wisconsin Waterway

Richard D. Cornell

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017

Inspired by August Derleth’s seminal book The Wisconsin, Richard D. Cornell traveled the Chippewa River from its two sources south of Ashland to where it joins the Mississippi. Over several decades he returned time and again in his red canoe to immerse himself in the stories of the Chippewa River and document its valley, from the Ojibwe and early fur traders and lumbermen to the varied and hopeful communities of today. Cornell shares tales of such historical figures as legendary Ojibwe leader Chief Buffalo, world famous wrestler Charlie Fisher, and supercomputer innovator Seymour Cray, along with the lesser-known stories of local luminaries such as Dr. John "Little Bird" Anderson. Cornell gathered firsthand stories from diners and dives, local museums and landmarks, quaint small-town newspaper offices, and the homes of old-timers and local historians. Through his conversations with ordinary people, he gets at the heart of the Chippewa and shares a history of the river that is both one of a kind and deeply personal.
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cover of The Detroit River: Stories of Development and Industrialization, 1874–1912

The Detroit River

Stories of Development and Industrialization, 1874–1912

Richard Gebhart

Michigan State University Press, 2027

Covering the period from the first government survey of the treacherous Limekiln Crossing to the completion of the Livingstone Channel, The Detroit River tells the story of the industrial transformation of the city’s most important waterway.

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cover of The Heart of the Lakes: Freshwater in the Past, Present and Future of Southeast Michigan

The Heart of the Lakes

Freshwater in the Past, Present and Future of Southeast Michigan

Dave Dempsey

Michigan State University Press, 2019

The water corridor that defines southeast Michigan sits at the heart of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem, the Great Lakes. Over forty-three trillion gallons of water a year flow through the Detroit River, providing a natural conduit for everything from fish migration to the movement of cargo-bearing one thousand–foot freighters, and a defining sense of place.  But in both government policies and individual practices, the freshwater at the heart of the lakes was long neglected and sometimes abused. Today southeast Michigan enjoys an opportunity to learn from that history and put freshwater at the center of a prosperous and sustainable future. Joining this journey downriver in place and time, from Port Huron to Monroe, from the 1600s to the present, provides insight and hope for the region’s water-based renaissance.
 
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cover of The Hudson: An Illustrated Guide to the Living River

The Hudson

An Illustrated Guide to the Living River

Stephen P. Stanne

Rutgers University Press, 2021

Since 1996, The Hudson: An Illustrated Guide to the Living River has been an essential resource for understanding the full sweep of the great river's natural history and human heritage. This updated third edition includes the latest information about the ongoing fight against pollution and environmental damage to the river, plus vibrant new full-color illustrations showing the plants and wildlife that make this ecosystem so special.
 
This volume gives a detailed account of the Hudson River’s history, including the geological forces that created it, the various peoples who have lived on its banks, and the great works of art it has inspired. It also showcases the many species making a home on this waterway, including the Atlantic sturgeon, the bald eagle, the invasive zebra mussel, and the herons of New York Harbor. Combining both scientific and historical perspectives, this book demonstrates why the Hudson and its valley have been so central to the environmental movement. 
 
As it charts the progress made towards restoring the river ecosystem and the effects of emerging threats like climate change, The Hudson identifies concrete ways that readers can help. To that end, royalties from the sale of this book will go to the non-profit environmental advocacy group Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc.
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cover of The Land between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall's Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819

The Land between the Rivers

Thomas Nuttall's Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819

Russell M. Lawson

University of Michigan Press, 2004

An adventure story from the wilds of early America, The Land between the Rivers recreates the journeys of the English botanist Thomas Nuttall, one of American history's most well-traveled scientists.

During the early nineteenth century, Nuttall explored the waters, valleys, plains, and mountains of the Great Lakes, Ohio River, Mississippi River, as well as the Missouri, Arkansas, Red, and Canadian river valleys of the former Louisiana Territory.

In this fascinating account of Nuttall's travels through the wilderness of the middle west, author Russell Lawson-using Nuttall's own journal-captures the sense of excitement of the early wanderer. As much a delight for the mind as the senses, The Land between the Rivers details the unremitting weather and rugged geography of uncharted lands within the Louisiana Territory. A sense of discovery pervades the narrative as Nuttall's odyssey builds to its climax in the prairie wilderness of what is now Oklahoma. Sickened by "ague"-in his case, malaria-Nuttall at times was barely able to go on; yet he continued to search for and catalog plants and animals.

The Land between the Rivers expands our knowledge of the work of one of the country's earliest botanists. We also learn a great deal about the early explorers, the inhabitants of the unsettled land, and about the land and culture of the times.
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cover of The Last River: Life Along Arkansas's Lower White

The Last River

Life Along Arkansas's Lower White

Turner Browne

University of Arkansas Press, 1993

With 68 compellingly beautiful photographs, Turner Browne documents a fast-disappearing way of life for the people who live on the lower White River and issues a plea to save the river from irreversible damage by the Army Corps of Engineers. By demonstrating that the endless dredging and flood control projects of the ever-active Corps are destroying the river's natural beauty and the livelihoods of those who make the river their only home - on houseboats and along its banks - he argues graphically and heroically for the preservation of a unique culture and of a great river. The black-and-white photographs, taken between Batesville, Arkansas, and the confluence with the Mississippi River, tell a story of loss, nostalgia, and fortitude as they portray the river's remarkable character and the exceptional lifestyles of acorn gatherers, sturgeon fishers, mussel divers, and others who extract a meager but satisfying existence from the river's resources. The damage the Corps of Engineers has wrought, including cleared forests, piles of debris, and "containment structures," certainly tolls a death knell for much of this natural waterway. The Last River is a journey, a journey probably never to be taken again.
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cover of The Lessening Stream: An Environmental History of the Santa Cruz River

The Lessening Stream

An Environmental History of the Santa Cruz River

Michael F. Logan

University of Arizona Press, 2002

Newcomers to Tucson know the Santa Cruz River as a dry bed that can become a rampaging flood after heavy rains. Yet until the late nineteenth century, the Santa Cruz was an active watercourse that served the region’s agricultural needs—until a burgeoning industrial society began to tap the river’s underground flow. The Lessening Stream reviews the changing human use of the Santa Cruz River and its aquifer from the earliest human presence in the valley to today. Michael Logan examines the social, cultural, and political history of the Santa Cruz Valley while interpreting the implications of various cultures' impacts on the river and speculating about the future of water in the region. Logan traces river history through three eras—archaic, modern, and postmodern—to capture the human history of the river from early Native American farmers through Spanish missionaries to Anglo settlers. He shows how humans first diverted its surface flow, then learned to pump its aquifer, and today fail to fully understand the river's place in the urban environment. By telling the story of the meandering river—from its origin in southern Arizona through Mexico and the Tucson Basin to its terminus in farmland near Phoenix—Logan links developments throughout the river valley so that a more complete picture of the river's history emerges. He also contemplates the future of the Santa Cruz by confronting the serious problems posed by groundwater pumping in Tucson and addressing the effects of the Central Arizona Project on the river valley. Skillfully interweaving history with hydrology, geology, archaeology, and anthropology, The Lessening Stream makes an important contribution to the environmental history of southern Arizona. It reminds us that, because water will always be the focus for human activity in the desert, we desperately need a more complete understanding of its place in our lives.
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cover of The Meaning of Rivers: Flow and Reflection in American Literature

The Meaning of Rivers

Flow and Reflection in American Literature

T. S. McMillin

University of Iowa Press, 2011

In the continental United States, rivers serve to connect state to state, interior with exterior, the past to the present, but they also divide places and peoples from one another. These connections and divisions have given rise to a diverse body of literature that explores American nature, ranging from travel accounts of seventeenth-century Puritan colonists to magazine articles by twenty-first-century enthusiasts of extreme sports. Using pivotal American writings to determine both what literature can tell us about rivers and, conversely, how rivers help us think about the nature of literature, The Meaning of Rivers introduces readers to the rich world of flowing water and some of the different ways in which American writers have used rivers to understand the world through which these waters flow.
      Embracing a hybrid, essayistic form—part literary theory, part cultural history, and part fieldwork—The Meaning of Rivers connects the humanities to other disciplines and scholarly work to the land. Whether developing a theory of palindromes or reading works of American literature as varied as Henry David Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and James Dickey’s Deliverance, McMillin urges readers toward a transcendental retracing of their own interpretive encounters.
      The nature of texts and the nature of “nature” require diverse and versatile interpretation; interpretation requires not only depth and concentration but also imaginative thinking, broad-mindedness, and engaged connection-making. By taking us upstream as well as down, McMillin draws attention to the potential of rivers for improving our sense of place and time.
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cover of The Other Jersey Shore: Life on the Delaware River

The Other Jersey Shore

Life on the Delaware River

Michael Aaron Rockland

Rutgers University Press, 2024

River otters, black bears, and red foxes drink from its clear waters. Prickly pear cacti grow from the red shale cliffs that overlook it, while on the river near Bordentown lies the archeological remnants of a sprawling estate built by the former King of Spain, Napoleon’s brother, who lived there for almost twenty years. You might imagine this magical and majestic waterway is located in some faraway land. But in fact, it’s the backbone and lifeblood of the Garden State: the Delaware River.
 
The Other Jersey Shore takes readers on a personal tour of the New Jersey portion of the Delaware River and its surroundings. You will learn about the role that the river played in human history, including Washington’s four crossings of the Delaware during the Revolutionary War. And you will also learn about the ecological history of the river itself, once one of the most polluted waterways in the country and now one of the cleanest, providing drinking water for 17 million people. Michael Aaron Rockland, a long-time New Jersey resident, shows readers his very favorite spots along the Delaware, including the pristine waterfalls and wilderness in the Delaware Water Gap recreation area. Along the way, he shares engrossing stories and surprising facts about the river that literally defines western New Jersey. 

 
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cover of The River Home: A Memoir

The River Home

A Memoir

Dorothy Weil

Ohio University Press, 2001

The death of her father begins Dorothy Weil’s search for what causes the family’s “spinning of in all directions like the pieces of Chaos.” She embarks on a river odyssey, traveling the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers by steamboat, towboat, and even an old-fashioned flatboat. The river brings her family back, as she records the stories of her fellow “river rats”: steamboat veterans, deckhands, captains, and cooks.

The River Home takes the reader into a world few ever glimpse, that of America’s riverboats. In the fast-paced narrative, with incisive characterizations and dialogue, the author introduces us to this vivid milieu and a gallery of fascinating people. We meet her father, a “wild river man from the Kentucky hills,” her mother, “a proper girl from a Cincinnati Dutch clan,” and her brother, a fourth-generation river man, as well as the artists and academics she meets in her adult life.

Weil’s voice is clear and wry, as well as poetic, bringing out both the sadness and joys of a family torn by mismatched backgrounds. Her themes speak to all: the confusion brought by family conflict, the strength of family love no matter how troubled the relationships, the mortality we all face, the importance of where we come from and where we go.

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cover of The River Knows Everything: Desolation Canyon and the Green

The River Knows Everything

Desolation Canyon and the Green

James M Aton

Utah State University Press, 2009

Desolation Canyon is one of the West's wild treasures. Visitors come to study, explore, run the river, and hike a canyon that is deeper at its deepest than the Grand Canyon, better preserved than most of the Colorado River system, and full of eye-catching geology-castellated ridges, dramatic walls, slickrock formations, and lovely beaches. Rafting the river, one may see wild horses, blue herons, bighorn sheep, and possibly a black bear. Signs of previous people include the newsworthy, well-preserved Fremont Indian ruins along Range Creek and rock art panels of Nine Mile Canyon, both Desolation Canyon tributaries. Historic Utes also pecked rock art, including images of graceful horses and lively locomotives, in the upper canyon. Remote and difficult to access, Desolation has a surprisingly lively history. Cattle and sheep herding, moonshine, prospecting, and hideaways brought a surprising number of settlers--ranchers, outlaws, and recluses--to the canyon.
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cover of The River We Have Wrought: A History of the Upper Mississippi

The River We Have Wrought

A History of the Upper Mississippi

John O. Anfinson

University of Minnesota Press, 2005

The River We Have Wrought is a landmark history of the upper Mississippi, from early European exploration through the completion of a navigable channel and a system of locks and dams in the mid-twentieth century. John Anfinson examines how politics has shaped the landscapes of the Upper Midwest and how taming the Mississippi River has affected economic sustainability, river ecology, and biological diversity.
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cover of The Same River Twice: A Boatman's Journey Home

The Same River Twice

A Boatman's Journey Home

Michael Burke

University of Arizona Press, 2006

In the summer of 1991 Michael Burke, an experienced river guide, embarks on a three-week journey down a series of remote rivers in British Columbia. Leaving behind his pregnant wife, he embraces the perils of a voyage with a companion he barely knows in a raft that may not weather the trip. He attempts to reconcile the shifting fates of his life—his transition from river guide to husband, father, and academic. At the same time, he hopes to explore his connection to a distant relative, Sid Barrington, who was a champion “swiftwater pilot of the North” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As Burke contemplates what he and Sid may have had in common, he meditates on the changing meaning of rivers, and the impossibility of fully recovering the past. In clear and graceful prose, Burke blends Sid’s colorful history with his own uncommon journey. He also reflects upon the quick currents of time and the fierce passion he shares with Sid for the life of river running in Alaska and the west. Unlike most river-running books that often describe waterways in the lower forty-eight states, The Same River Twice introduces readers to rough, austere, and unfamiliar rivers in the northern wilderness. Burke has an intimate understanding of these remote, free-flowing rivers. He effectively captures the thrill of moving water, the spirit of rivers and river canyons, and the life of river guides. This insightful memoir brings readers into a confluence of rivers, where past and present merge, revealing the power of wilderness and the truth about changing course.
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cover of The Shenandoah

The Shenandoah

Julia Davis

West Virginia University Press, 2011

In 1945, West Virginia author Julia Davis penned The Shenandoah as part of the Rivers of America Series, a landmark collection of books written by literary figures over a period of thirty years. In this classic reprint, now with an introduction by Christopher Camuto, Davis tells the history of the Shenandoah Valley and River, drawing on her own research and the experiences of ancestors who settled and lived in the area. Her book provides a poetic vision of both the river and the valley, preserving a fragment of America’s landscape.
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cover of The Tensaw River: Alabama's Hidden Heritage Corridor

The Tensaw River

Alabama's Hidden Heritage Corridor

Mike Bunn

University of Alabama Press, 2025

Where nature meets history—explore Alabama’s hidden river legacy.

The Tensaw River introduces one of the American South’s richest and most fertile natural features. Author Mike Bunn is director of Historic Blakeley State Park, which is nestled in a prominent bend of the majestic Tensaw River. Reading Bunn is like sailing with a knowledgeable captain along the river’s natural and cultural byways as he offers a treasury of stories and facts that illuminate the river’s astonishing flora and fauna and the sweep of human history along the river’s ageless, meandering waterways.

Forming the eastern boundary of the expansive Mobile-Tensaw Delta, the Tensaw has had little industrial development. Left largely undisturbed, the river still flows free and bountiful into the grand estuary of Mobile Bay in ways and along vistas that would be recognizable to Native Americans centuries ago and to pioneers who arrived before Alabama became a state.

Bunn’s unforgettable stories in The Tensaw River trace the construction and occupation of the Bottle Creek site, an important mound complex built by Southeastern Native Americans a millennia ago. Nearby Blakeley is a spectral antebellum ghost town whose lost memories also tease the imagination. During the Civil War, the boom of artillery fire in the battle that sealed the fate of the city of Mobile echoed along the bends in the Tensaw.

Located near popular Gulf Coast travel destinations, the Tensaw’s forty-one-mile-long “Forgotten Cultural Heritage Corridor” is a gateway to the enchanting beauty of—and humankind’s enduring relationship to—the landscape of the American South.

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cover of Tributary Voices: Literary and Rhetorical Exploration of the Colorado River

Tributary Voices

Literary and Rhetorical Exploration of the Colorado River

Paul A. Formisano

University of Nevada Press, 2022

The Colorado River is in crisis. Persistent drought, climate change, and growing demands from ongoing urbanization threaten this life-source that provides water to more than forty million people in the U.S. and Mexico. Coupled with these challenges are our nation’s deeply rooted beliefs about the region as a frontier, garden, and wilderness that have created competing agendas about the river as something to both exploit and preserve. Over the last century and a half, citizens and experts looked to law, public policy, and science to solve worsening water problems. Yet today’s circumstances demand additional perspectives to foster a more sustainable relationship with the river.

Through literary, rhetorical, and historical analysis of some of the Colorado River’s lesser-known stakeholders, Tributary Voices considers a more comprehensive approach to river management on the eve of the one-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Colorado River Compact, which governs the allocation of water rights to the seven states in the region. Ranging from the early twentieth century to the present, Tributary Voices examines nature writing, women’s narratives, critiques of dam development, the Latina/o communities’ appeals for river restoration, American Indian authors’ and tribal nations’ claims of water sovereignty, and teachings about environmental stewardship and provident living. This innovative study models an interdisciplinary approach to water governance and reinvigorates our imagination in achieving a more sustainable water ethic.
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