BOETTI, ALIGHIERO and SAUZEAU-BOETTI, ANNE-MARIE. Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world. Text in Italian and English. Thick 8vo (8 1/2 x 6 inches), original full red cloth, faint spine fade, small dent to bottom of fore-edge; contents clean. Limited edition, number 448 of 300 copies from a total edition of 500; presentation copy, signed by Boetti and Sauzeau-Boetti and inscribed "A Peter with big simpaty [?]." The limitation describes the various issues as 150 copies signed with embroidered covers (numbered 1-150), 300 [plain cloth as here] copies numbered 151-450, and 50 copies reserved for the authors numbered I to L. It is likely there were also a scant few unnumbered and H.C. copies produced. Monumental Arte Povera artists book begun in 1971. An unworkable taxonomy: the introductory text announces the virtual impossibility of achieving what the title purports to describe ("The criterion of length is the most arbitrary and ingenuous but still the most usually applied. Yet it is impossible to measure the length of a river because of the thousand perplexities raised by its flowing existence [...]"). The text running from the White Nile (6671 KM) to the Agusan (384 KM), bracketing another 998 rivers within. Amman, Alighiero Boetti. Catalogo generale. Tomo secondo. Opere 1972-1979, Milan, 2012, No. 909, p. 270. (Italy, 1977)