"River" Nonfiction to Enjoy

"On the west bank of the Mississippi lies the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers. Short on hope but big on dreams, its mostly poor and marginalized residents find joy on Friday nights when the Cougars of Edna Karr High School take the field. For years, this football program has brought glory to Algiers, winning three consecutive state championships and sending dozens of young men to college on football scholarships. Although he is preparing for a fourth title, head coach Brice Brown is focused on something else: keeping his players alive. An epidemic of gun violence plagues New Orleans and its surrounding communities and has claimed many innocent lives, including Brown’s former star quarterback, Tollette “Tonka” George, shot near a local gas station. In Across the River, award-winning sports journalist Kent Babb follows the Karr football team through its 2019 season as Brown and his team—perhaps the scrappiest and most rebellious group in the program’s history—vie to again succeed on and off the field. What is sure to be a classic work of sports journalism, Across the River is a necessary investigation into the serious realities of young athletes in struggling neighborhoods: gentrification, eviction, mental health issues, the drug trade, and gun violence. It offers a rich and unflinching portrait of a coach, his players, and the West Bank, a community where it’s difficult—but not impossible—to rise above the chaos, discover purpose, and find a way out." (from Amazon.com)

Nine Ways to Cross a River is by Akiko Busch. "After a transformative swim across the Hudson just before September 11, Busch undertook to explore eight of America's great waterways: the Hudson (twice), the Delaware, the Connecticut, the Susquehanna, the Monongahela, the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Current. She observes each river's goings-on and reflects on its history (human and natural) and possible futures. Some of the rivers have rebounded from past industrial misuse; others still struggle with pollution and waste. The swims are also opportunities to muse on the ordinary passages faced by most of us―the death of a parent, raising children, becoming older―and the ways in which the rhythms and patterns of the natural world can offer reassurance, ballast and inspiration. A deeply moving exploration of the themes of renewal and reclamation at midlife, Nine Ways to Cross a River is a book to be treasured and given to friends. From Thoreau to Edward Abbey to Annie Dillard, American writers have looked at nature and described the sublime and transcendent. Now comes Akiko Busch, who finds multitudes of meaning in the practice of swimming across rivers. The notion that rivers divide us is old and venerated, but they also limn our identities and mark the passage of time; they anchor communities and connect one to another. And, in the hands of writer and swimmer Akiko Busch, they are living archives of human behavior and natural changes." (from Amazon.com)

"In River of the Gods Candice Millard has written another peerless story of courage and adventure, set against the backdrop of the race to exploit Africa by the colonial powers.For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, there was  a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe – and extend their colonial empires. Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for England. Burton spoke twenty-nine languages, and was a decorated soldier. He was also mercurial, subtle, and an iconoclastic atheist. Speke was a young aristocrat and Army officer determined to make his mark, passionate about hunting, Burton’s opposite in temperament and beliefs. From the start the two men clashed. They would endure tremendous hardships, illness, and constant setbacks. Two years in, deep in the African interior, Burton became too sick to press on, but Speke did, and claimed he found the source in a great lake that he christened Lake Victoria. When they returned to England, Speke rushed to take credit, disparaging Burton. Burton disputed his claim, and Speke launched another expedition to Africa to prove it. The two became venomous enemies, with the public siding with the more charismatic Burton, to Speke’s great envy. The day before they were to publicly debate, Speke shot himself. Yet there was a third man on both expeditions, his name obscured by imperial annals, whose exploits were even more extraordinary. This was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was enslaved and shipped from his home village in East Africa to India. When the man who purchased him died, he made his way into the local Sultan’s army, and eventually traveled back to Africa, where he used his resourcefulness, linguistic prowess and raw courage to forge a living as a guide. Without Bombay and men like him, who led, carried, and protected the expedition, neither Englishman would have come close to the headwaters of the Nile, or perhaps even survived." (from Amazon.com)

Paddling the Pascagoula is by Ernest Herndon and Scott B. Williams."Science magazine describes the Pascagoula River of southeast Mississippi as the last unaltered large river system in the lower 48 states and southern Canada. Along its banks and watershed 600,000 acres of public lands--wildlife management areas, national forest, wilderness areas, national wildlife refuges, Nature Conservancy preserves--ensure the creation of a tremendous natural river system. To explore this sanctum, authors Ernest Herndon and Scott B. Williams traveled its entire 200-plus mile length by canoe and sea kayak, respectively. Each floated one of two major tributaries, Herndon taking the Leaf, Williams the Chickasawhay. They then met on the main Pascagoula and continued on to the Gulf Coast. Along the way the two saw alligators and ospreys, conservationists and good ole boys. They ran rapids and explored swamps, dodged logjams and investigated possible pollution sources. Herndon and Williams brought considerable skills and experience to their journey. Herndon has gone on backcountry trips to places as far-flung as Papua New Guinea and Alaska, while Williams paddled his sea kayak solo down the Mississippi and across the Caribbean. Together they've canoed and kayaked all over the South as well as in remote parts of Central America. Both agree the Pascagoula basin is one of the most intriguing outdoor destinations they have experienced. The book gives the armchair explorer a vivid feeling of what it would be like to float this wonderful river and provides a wealth of information about what makes it special and the problems that threaten it." (from Amazon.com)

In The Secret Life of the Seine, Mort Rosenblum is our guide to life along the river and to the many pleasures unique to this main artery of the heart of France. We get to know his own floating village between the Pont de l'Alma and the Pont de la Concorde, but then setting out from Paris, he takes us to the river's source near Dijon, through the provinces of Burgundy and Champagne, past castles and abbeys and cherry orchards, through a thousand years of French history and culture, and on to Normandy, where the Seine empties at least into the sea at Le Havre.