Drawing together many histories-of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores-Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers. She prof... (show more)
Reviews (18)
I found this book to be interesting overall, but tough to read at times. Concepts were interesting, she drew connections to things I have never thought of before. Definitely NOT a leisurely read - more scholarly. I would reccomend this book to anyone studying/practicing urban planning, architecture, environmental design, and social environments. And ANYONE who loves to walk/has a wanderlust.
Interesting book. As most of my acquaintances know, I've been a huge fan of walking & believe the car is an evil necessity. Therefore, you can understand how an eccentric history such as this we have here would highly appeal to me. In the practice of reading it, however it's not as strong as it could have been. The author seems to show a disdain at people who walk for any other reason than the principles she herself feels is worthy of walking. It's not so brutal as to condem others, it's just that you can read a whole interesting dissertation about a subculture of walkers that is refreshingly unbiased until the last paragraph where she will take a passive aggressive jab at them. It doesn't disrupt the flow of the book, it's just annoying. She herself seems much more interested in the political overtones of walking than any sort of personal fulfillment other people would choose to pursue. It's just strange.
Also it turns out, that she is a complete Anglofile. When I think of walking I think of Australians, or the Alpine countries. I don't think of pasty white British people fighting for the right to climb up some hill in the Lake District. Every function of walking as a phenomena is likened to something that happened in England. Whether it's English Garden Design to the reclaimation of nature by the working class people trapped in recently industrialized Britain, everything she talks about has to do Brits walking around or feeling the need to walk. Although it is interesting, it was a little wierd to whittle such a neccessity of mankind to within one rainy island.
There was one really fascinating chapter about Paris and the layout of cities but even here, the examples she often states are of British people living in Paris.
If you can get past this flavoring of the facts, there's a lot of good material and food for thought in this quirky history.
Poetic excursions into history, cities, nature, etc; reveals the ways history and culture are best observed not from a car's insular, air-conditioned confines, but on foot. How else can you get to those unpredictable, more interesting, hard-to-reach places?
I read the first couple of chapters, but I got bored with her fancy writing. I liked the chapter on walking to Chimayo in NM, cuz I was just there.
Incredibly dense... a little dull at times. If I hadn't been confined to an island with nothing else to do but work and read I would have switched this book for something else....
Brilliant read history,geography,architecture, philospophy all in the act of placing one foot in front of another
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