Nick Middleton (1) (1960–)

Very disappointing. The subject is interesting, but the book is extremely shallow. There's basically just 1-2 pages worth of information per "country". I wanted to learn a lot more about history, politics, culture etc.

This is an excellent book by Nick Middleton. I picked it up some time back, and when I read this book, I enjoyed it thoroughly. it is excellent, beautifully written, and brings many aspects of rivers to life.

A river is not just a river. It is home to many creatures, it is a thing of reverence, and it sustains us. Yet, while we worship rivers, we abuse them.

Read this book, and you will appreciate rivers again

A triumph of design over content, this volume's 232 pages are chiefly consumed by peek-a-boo maps, double-page continent headings and fact sheets with huge borders. That leaves little space with useful content, just a page for each of 50 “countries.” I did learn a little about places I was unfamiliar with, but it really wasn't worth it.

Middleton travels to the corners of the Earth to find the hottest, coldest, driest and wettest places in the world. It’s an enjoyable trek to Siberia, Chile, Ethiopia and India as Middleton finds that constant rain during the night makes him need to continuously head to the toilet, visits the least used rain gauge in the world, goes for a swim in water so cold my balls have retracted into my groin just thinking about it, and gasped at the sheer desolation and heat of Ethiopia.