...[an] important new book.

Geography can be history and history geography—and sometimes the most obvious things are overlooked. Laurence C. Smith’s Rivers of Power endeavours to make us see beneath the surfaces of arterial waters and consider them as carriers of civilisation and arbiters of destinies.

...[a] brave attempt to write a history of the world’s rivers from more than 4bn years ago until the present day.

This is a book for fluviophiles.

This engagingly panoramic and truly global discussion of the connection between rivers and human civilization meanders, yet serves as an important reminder of our dependence upon the planet’s arteries of fresh water.

Rivers, writes environmental scientist Smith, are in the eye of the beholder. Their value is often not evident to us except in the biggest of pictures, which is why the current generations of humans continue to dam them, fill them with pollutants and plastic bottles, and otherwise mistreat them.