"Each case study in Rivertown considers the critical questions of who makes decisions about our urban rivers, who pays to implement these decisions, and who ultimately benefits or suffers from these decisions." --book cover.

In turn-of-the-century Australia, Tim Shea, supports his young family by running a general store in a remote riverside town, where he finds the same the same hypocrisy and snobbery which made him emigrate from Ireland, and suffers a series of misfortunes which take him to the brink of disaster. Capturing the spirit of the times, this is the mesmerising tale of a flawed hero whose stubborn integrity is nearly his undoing.

When Peter Hessler went to China in the late 1990s, he expected to spend a couple of peaceful years teaching English in the town of Fuling on the Yangtze River. But what he experienced - the natural beauty, cultural tension, and complex process of understanding that takes place when one is thrust into a radically different society - surpassed anything he could have imagined. Hessler observes firsthand how major events such as the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong to the mainland, and the controversial consturction of the Three Gorges Dam have affected even the people of a remote town like Fuling. Poignant, thoughtful and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a place caught mid-river in time, much like China itself - a country seeking to understand both what it was and what it will one day become.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, small towns sprouted up along the banks of America's rivers. Through a year of changing seasons the reader is transported to the days when people's livelihoods were directly connected to the river. The life of the townsfolk is shown to be an accumulation of events both large and small, from a joyous Halloween parade to the frozen river in winter to the threat of damaging springtime floods. Children and adults alike will pour over these pages of intricate etchings, noticing the changes and happenings of day-to-day, season-to-season life lived along a river. As they did in Prairie Town, the Geiserts have once again created a stunning tribute to small-town America as it once was and, to an extent, still remains today.