Magdalena

Starred review from February 3, 2020
Davis (One River), an anthropology professor at the University of British Columbia, travels the length of Colombia’s Rio Magdalena through wildly varied geographies and a past of horrific massacres, in this ardent travelogue. He visits the river’s mountainous source, where ancient native communities thrived before conquistadors exterminated them; surveys villages annihilated by a 1984 volcanic eruption that killed 25,000 people; recalls the thousands killed during drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s 1980s reign of terror in Medellín, and the city’s rebirth as an urban-planning showcase; recounts the ordeal of farm towns trapped in the recent civil war between murderous left-wing guerrillas and even more murderous right-wing death squads; and basks in placid fishing communities in the river’s delta (site of an attack by another right-wing death squad). Along the way he views the country’s lush flora and fauna—and heartbreaking environmental damage wrought by humans—through the writings of 19th-century naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, the book’s presiding spirit, and delivers a romantic profile of revolutionary hero Simón Bolivar, a liberator turned dictator turned bitter old man. Davis stocks his lively narrative with piquant characters, dramatic historical set pieces, and lyrical nature writing (“The mouth of the Rio Magdalena is the color of the earth”). The result is a rich, fascinating study of how nature and a people shape each other.

March 1, 2020

For most Americans, the image of Colombia is one of drug cartels and violence. For Davis (anthropology, Univ. of British Columbia; Into the Silence), while he fully acknowledges that part of Colombia's history, the lifeblood of the country is the Rio Magdalena. At the darkest times, the river served as a mass graveyard for those victimized by violence. Yet, it also gave birth to music, literature, and religion in the country. From the time he was a teenager, Davis has had a love affair with Colombia and Colombians, culminating in this project to explore all aspects of the Magdalena, the commercial and cultural center of the country. By exploring the river, Davis uncovers stories of this unique place and the people shaped by it. He also offers a glimpse of the hope that the river provides to a country seeking to define itself in peace after decades of conflict. VERDICT Shifting seamlessly from travelog to history to nature writing, Davis weaves together a fascinating story of the geographical and cultural diversity of the Rio Magdalena, a diversity that characterizes the spirit of Colombia. Recommended for those who enjoy good writing, and all interested in a new perspective on personal narratives.--Michael C. Miller, Austin P.L. & Austin History Ctr., TX

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2020
The explorer, photographer, and prolific author returns to a country beloved since his boyhood to chronicle a river whose rehabilitation mirrors Colombia's own. Traveling to Colombia in the early 1970s from Canada, Davis--a professor of anthropology and former explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society whose book Into the Silence won the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize--regards the country as the place that first allowed him to "imagine and dream" and to give him "license to be free." Davis' popular book One River, published in a Spanish edition in 2002, was "a love letter to a nation by then scorned by the world," still in the throes of the violence and corruption of drug cartels, which sadly marred the country's reputation as a place of natural splendor. In his latest delightful journey, the author takes on the Magdalena, the so-called Mississippi of Colombia, which is celebrated for its legendary status as the life artery bringing food to the regions, exploration, trade, and commerce but also excoriated as a highway for the death and corruption that plagued the country for 50 years. Davis is a natural, engaging storyteller, and while he makes his way through Colombia's history--from the early Tairona natives' sophisticated civilization on the shores of the river, first contacted by the Spanish explorers in the early 16th century (and subsequently decimated), through the dark days of the drug wars of the 1980s and '90s--the book is also an affecting account of on-the-ground exploration. The author skillfully weaves in accounts by academics, who have studied the vicissitudes of the river, and by the people who have lived and toiled along its shores. Many of these people have endured decades of political turmoil, beginning in 1946, when the Liberals and Conservatives "faced off in fratricidal conflict" known as La Violencia. This remarkable river has endured eras of massive extermination, erosion, damming, and pollution, but it has emerged renewed thanks to a people's spirit and resilience. An elegant narrative masterfully combining fine reporting and a moving personal journey.

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Starred review from March 15, 2020
Rivers are the planet's veins and arteries, and the life blood of human civilizations. Intrepid anthropologist and award-winning and entrancing writer Davis, a former Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, portrays the Amazon in One River (1996), and travels the Colorado River in River Notes (2012). In this deeply inquisitive, dazzlingly fluent scientific, cultural, and spiritual investigation, Davis illuminates the natural and human history of R�o Magdalena, the Mississippi River of Colombia. This far-reaching, centuries-encompassing river biography is shaped by Davis' love for Colombia, which enabled him to imagine and dream as a 14-year-old Canadian on a school trip in 1968. Davis has extensively explored this wondrous home to the greatest ecological and geographical diversity on the planet, but Colombia is not known for its natural splendor, but rather for catastrophic civil wars, shocking atrocities, brutal drug cartels, and incalculable suffering and loss. Fifty years of terror which echo the genocidal invasion of the Spanish, and which turned the Magdalena into a river of death.Always with a discerning eye to the symbolic and metaphorical, Davis tells the river's saga of fecundity and horror through the lives of remarkable individuals past and present. Among the former are Jos� Celestino Mutis, the patriarch of American botany, and the revolutionary hero, Francisco Jos� de Caldas, both of whom worked with naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt, during his Colombian sojourns. Among the people Davis met along the river are resilient Juan Guillermo, who survived guerilla violence to create a nature preserve, and Jenny Casta�eda, who courageously carries on work that cost her mother, the fiery social activist Damaris Mej�a, her life. Throughout Davis emphasizes Colombia's many Indigenous peoples and their abiding belief that protecting the river is a sacred duty. The story of Magdalena, as for every river, is that of an epic struggle between the sacred and the profane, between worship and preservation and reckless exploitation and wanton abuse. More river histories: The Hudson: America's River. By Frances F. Dunwell.Meander: East to West, Indirectly, along a Turkish River. By Jeremy Seal. The Nile: A Journey Downriver through Egypt's Past and Present. By Toby Wilkinson. Nine Ways to Cross a River. By Akiko Busch. Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History. By Paul Schneider. On the Ganges: Encounters with Saints and Sinners along India's Mythic River. By George Black. River in Ruin: The Story of the Carmel River. By Ray A. March. River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America's Rivers. By Daniel McCool. Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World. By Laurence C. Smith. The Robber of Memories: A River Journey through Colombia. By Michael Jacobs.Running Dry: A Journey from Source to Sea down the Colorado River. By Jonathan Waterman.The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers. By Martin Doyle.Where the Water Goes: Life and Death along the Colorado River. By David Owen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)