Wanderlust : A History of Walking - Softcover

Rebecca Solnit

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859843816 ISBN 13: 9781859843819

Publisher: Verso, 2002

Synopsis

With profiles of some of the most significant walkers in history and fiction - from Wordsworth to Andre Breton's Nadja - Wanderlust offers a pastoral and poetic investigation of the interplay between the body, the imagination, and the world around the walker. Solnit argues passionately for the preservation of the time and space in which to walk in an ever-more car dependent and accelerated world.

About this title

Review:

The ability to walk on two legs over long distances distinguishes Homo sapiens from other primates, and indeed from every other species on earth. That ability has also yielded some of the best creative work of our species: the lyrical ballads of the English romantic poets, composed on long walks over hill and dale; the speculations of the peripatetic philosophers; the meditations of footloose Chinese and Japanese poets; the exhortations of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.

Rebecca Solnit, a thoughtful writer and spirited walker, takes her readers on a leisurely journey through the prehistory, history, and natural history of bipedal motion. Walking, she observes, affords its practitioners an immediate reward--the ability to observe the world at a relaxed gait, one that allows us to take in sights, sounds, and smells that we might otherwise pass by. It provides a vehicle for much-needed solitude and private thought. For the health-minded, walking affords a low-impact and usually pleasant way of shedding a few pounds and stretching a few muscles. It is an essential part of the human adventure--and one that has, until now, been too little documented.

Written in a time when landscapes and cities alike are designed to accommodate automobiles and not pedestrians, Solnit's extraordinary book is an enticement to lace up shoes and set out on an aimless, meditative stroll of one's own. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

Rebecca Solnit, author of A book of Migrations, Savage Dreams, and Secret Exhibition, has written about visual art, public space, landscape, and environmental issues for magazines and for museums ranging from New York's Whitney to the Denver Art Museum. She Lives in san Francisco.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1859843816
• ISBN 13: 9781859843819
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356