Welcome to The End of the River

Hi, I'm Brian Harvey, and I'm publishing my third book, The End of the River, with ECW Press. It's coming out in November.

I'm a scientist, and scientists don't communicate very well. Not with the public, anyway – but that's exactly who they need to communicate with! I wrote The End of the River to do something about that.

If you're one of those people who care about the environment and are totally confused, this book is for you. I wrote this book with one main principle in mind: tell real stories that illustrate what's happening (in this case, with aquatic life on our planet). In other words entertain people, and maybe they'll stay with you for the journey instead of bailing out before Part Two.

Global water is often tabbed as the next big environmental issue. In many water-poor countries, rivers are over-tapped, and underground water is running out. Global fisheries is another big problem that confuses everyone (including the scientists, believe me). To help understand these things (and to figure out what you can do), I take you painlessly behind the scenes. I do this for science too - a mystifying process that many people don’t understand. My book gets at bigger issues by using personal memoir and observations made by earlier explorers and historians. One special place – Brazil's São Francisco River – flows through the book. This story hit the international news in December 2007, with big protests against the planned diversion of the river. It’s still a huge issue in Brazil.

The book is written so that readers will be willing to follow me – a practicing conservationist - into the São Francisco and the bigger human issues it represents. I didn’t do any of this stuff to write a book; instead, I lived it – still do.

By the way, Part Two is called "Science, Sex and Sushi."