Light at the Edge of the World

An international best-seller when first published, this is Wade Davis's portrait of the richness and diversity of the world's indigenous cultures and why they matter to us all.

Davis has travelled the world for more than thirty years, studying the mysteries of sacred plants and celebrating the poetics of culture. His explorations of indigenous life in places as remote and diverse as the Canadian Arctic, the rain forests of Borneo and the Amazon, and the surreal cultural landscape of Haiti have taught him that many of these cultures are in danger of losing their way of life -- a loss that affects humans on a global scale.

In Light at the Edge of the World Davis' looks at the "ethnosphere" -- the diversity of ways of thinking and living that traditional cultures have to teach us about our place in the world, and how we affect one another and our surroundings.

Wade Davis is Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Between 1999 and 2013 he served as Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and is currently a member of the NGS Explorers Council and Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Davis is the author of nineteen books, including One River, The Wayfinders, The Sacred Headwaters, Into the Silence and River Notes. His photographs have been widely exhibited and have appeared in thirty books and a hundred magazines, including National Geographic, Time, Geo, People, Men's Journal and Outside. His recent book Into the Silence received the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize, the top award for literary non-fiction in the English language. In 2016 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.