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Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World Audiobook
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Rivers, more than any road, technology, or political leader, have shaped the course of human civilization. They have opened frontiers, founded cities, settled borders, and fed billions. They promote life, forge peace, grant power, and can capriciously destroy everything in their path. Even today, rivers remain a powerful global force—one that is more critical than ever to our future.
In Rivers of Power, geographer Laurence C. Smith explores the timeless yet underappreciated relationship between rivers and civilization as we know it. Rivers are of course important in many practical ways—water supply, transportation, sanitation, etc.—but the full breadth of their influence on the way we live is less obvious. Rivers define and transcend international borders, forcing cooperation between nations. Huge volumes of river water are used to produce energy, raw commodities, and food. Wars, politics, and demography are transformed by their devastating floods. The territorial claims of nations, their cultural and economic ties to each other, and the migrations and histories of their peoples trace back to rivers, river valleys, and the topographic divides they carve upon the world. And as climate change, technology, and cities transform our relationship with nature, new opportunities are arising to protect the waters that sustain us.
Beautifully told and expansive in scope, Rivers of Power reveals how and why rivers have so profoundly influenced our civilization and examines the importance this vast, arterial power holds for the future of humanity.
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“This engagingly panoramic and truly global discussion of the connection between rivers and human civilization serves as an important reminder of our dependence upon the planet’s arteries of fresh water.”
— Booklist
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“As fascinating as it is beautifully written.”
— Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, and Upheaval -
“A tour of the world’s great rivers—past, present, and future. The result is fascinating, eye-opening, sometimes alarming, and ultimately inspiring.”
— Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Times bestselling author
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About Laurence C. Smith
Laurence C. Smith, PhD, is a professor and chair of geography and a professor of earth, planetary, and space sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is frequently invited to give keynote speeches, and in 2012, 2014, 2016, he was an invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He is the author of The World in 2050, winner of the Walter P. Kistler Book Award and a Nature Editor’s Pick of 2012. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the London Economist, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Toronto Globe and Mail, the Financial Times, Discover magazine, NPR, CBC Radio, the BBC, and others.
About Victor Bevine
Victor Bevine, Earphones Award–winning narrator, has worked for over thirty years as an actor, screenwriter, narrator, director, and more. A graduate of Yale University, his acting credits include many prestigious roles onstage as well as roles in the film version of A Separate Peace and countless television shows. He has written several screenplays, including Certainty, which was chosen for two prestigious writers’ conferences and which served as the basis for his first novel. His thirty-minute short film Desert Cross, which he wrote and directed, won accolades at the Athens International Film Festival. He serves as CEO of the World Freerunning Parkour Federation, of which he is cofounder.