Templeton Bookspark

We are thrilled to be publishing a book this month entitled In the River They Swim: Essays from Around the World on Enterprise Solutions to Poverty. It offers a fascinating look into the efforts of people who have dedicated their lives to waging an ongoing battle against  poverty and its pages are full of lessons learned from the front lines of this global struggle. It’s a really great project and it we love “talking it up” whenever someone asks what’s new for the Press lately.

After we’ve explained the idea, and gushed about how wonderful the book is, the ineveitable next question is: “So what’s the story with the title? In the river? They swim?”

A fair question – just what is the story behind that title? For an answer, I’ll turn it over to editor Michael Fairbanks who explains the allegorical roots of the title ever-so-eloquently in his Introduction:

A Sufi master once told his disciples about the different levels of knowledge. ‘There are different ways to know a river,’ he began. First, you can read books about it and learn its length, its source, its depth, its width, the power of its current, the types of fish it contains, and other tangible facts. Then you can undertake the long journey to see it. You invest time, money, and hardships to travel to that river so that you can one day sit on its shores and look at it. When that day comes, you have attained a greater level of knowledge because you know its smell, you feel the sand that borders it, and you watch the birds that play over it. Finally, at last, you take off your clothes, and dive in to swim in the river. You feel its current along your body, the gradients of temperature, its depth. You taste something of it. You wonder if you have the strength to swim its length.

… So it goes with every thing worth knowing. If the work of human economic development is a river, the authors in this volume, and perhaps some readers, will no longer be satisfied to stand along its banks.

Want the full story? We hope you’ll grab a copy of the book, of course, but also be sure to check out the beautiful new web site for the project at http://intherivertheyswim.com.