Matthew Dickerson takes his readers from an Applachian trout stream in western North Carolina where wild trout are reduced to sipping cigarette butts, up through his home state of Vermont where development and the ski industry threaten the state's iconic pastoral riversides, and finally into western Maine to a once dead river that has returned to life. The tale takes us not only to the three eponymous rivers, but to other nearby streams and waters. Though neither an historical nor as scientific text, the writing is informed by both, and as readers are drawn through the tale, they will grow in their own understanding of both stream ecology and the history of human habitation and consumption. The book is illustrated by original prints from Vermont artist Courtney Allenson.

Are humans just complex biochemical machines, mere physical parts of a causally closed materialist universe? Are we approaching the so-called 'Singularity', when human consciousness can (and will) be downloaded into computers? Or is there more to the human person - something that might be known as 'soul' or 'spirit'? As this book makes clear, the answers to these questions have profound implications to topics such as heroism, creativity, ecology, and the possibility of reason and science. In exploring this important topic, Dickerson engages the ideas of some well-known twentieth- and twentyfirst-century espousers of physicalism, including the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the biologist Richard Dawkins, the futurist-engineer Raymond Kurzweil, the psychologist B.F. Skinner, and the mathematician-philosopher Bertrand Russell. Through a careful reading of their works, Dickerson not only provides a fivefold critique of physicalism but also offers a Christian alternative in the form of 'integrative dualism', which affirms the existence of both a physical and a spiritual reality without diminishing the goodness or importance of either, and acknowledges that humans are spiritual as well as bodily persons.