The Colorado River: Chasing Water

2024 National Outdoor Book Award Winner

Ten Best Photography Books of 2024, Smithsonian Magazine

In Association with Grand Canyon Conservancy and National Audubon Society.

Through photography and essays, this book is a celebration of one of America’s most valuable and iconic rivers and a warning demonstrating the river is a bellwether of overuse and climate change.

America’s Western water crisis is now newsworthy on a global level, and the Colorado River is in the crosshairs. The Colorado River is the most comprehensive look at this challenged resource that supplies drinking water to forty million Americans and supports five percent of the country’s GDP.

While acclaimed photographer Pete McBride has covered water worldwide and been dubbed a “freshwater hero” by National Geographic, he now brings us home to his deepest passion: saving his backyard river, the Colorado. For two decades, McBride has documented the Colorado River, from source to sea and always with a camera in hand.

Through McBride’s photography and his own words, as well as essays on climate change and river overuse, we witness the stark reality of our water crisis but also the remarkable beauty and resilience of this ephemeral source of life.