Wanderlust: A History of Walking

I felt my heart swell with each step taken through its pages. This captivating book delves deep into the history of our most basic means of transportation, exploring its evolution through time, space, and culture. With each turn of the page, I was transported to new and exotic lands, and felt the rhythmic pulse of walking in my very soul. The author's poetic prose and insightful observations drew me in, and I was lost in a world where every step held infinite possibility. This book is a true love letter to the art of walking, and I am forever smitten.

A rather thorough examination of 'walking for pleasure.' (Which is actually a fairly recent development for humans.) This covers some of the most famous writers who walked, along with some explorers and climbers, and ends with the present day incongruities of people driving in cars to walk miles on treadmills at a gym. A very thought-provoking work.

I might have given this an extra 1/2 of a star, but the narrator mispronounced words with just enough frequency for me to get a bit cranky. Look stuff up BEFORE you record it for gawd's sake. It's Northanger Abbey, not Northanjer Abbey. :oP

Interesting as history of walking as recreation, nature appreciation escape from city life, etc. Feminists will be appalled by chapter on women--the assumption that any woman on the streets is there for sexual purposes backed up by laws allowing women to be arrested on mere suspicion. Also history of walkers associations in England enforcing traditional right of way across private property to maintain network of trails.

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Maybe it’s my rediscovery of the joy of walking that coincided with my discovery of this book through [a:Craig Mod|65581|Craig Mod|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1437565930p2/65581.jpg]’s writing, but this is A Very Important Book. It traces the anthropological and cultural history of walking through the ages, interlacing personal anecdotes with historical observations, interviews, and sense impressions. It is at once poetry, scholarly writing, investigative journalism, and nonfiction. It changed my relationship with my legs and body, and with their relationship and the open world.

An interesting demonstration of how a publisher can create a ludicrously overblown subtitle without including a single adjective. You clearly don't need to assert that a story is "extraordinary", "incredible" or even "true" - the simple, unadorned word "history" is already enough to make an extraordinary, incredible (but not, alas, true) claim for the subject-matter of the book that lies behind it...

But that probably isn't the author's fault, and other than on its front cover, this book doesn't make any real claim to be anything other than what it is, an interesting and worthwhile collection of essays grouped around the cultural (mostly literary) significance of Anglo-American attitudes to getting about on foot over the last couple of show more centuries. Solnit looks at obvious topics like the relationship between recreational walking and garden design; the importance of walking in nature for the Wordsworths and Thoreau and how that led to the later development of access and conservation movements; walking as a political act in parades, pilgrimages and protest marches; and travel-writing and the rise of mountaineering and challenge-walking. And, as a dedicated subversive and feminist, she also looks at some less obvious socio-political aspects of walking - walking and prostitution, exclusion of women and minorities from public spaces in which walking is possible, US cities built without any no provision for getting around on foot, and so on. Most of the essays bring together material from literary sources with reflections from her own personal experiences, and very often lead her to non-obvious insights into the ideological framework within which very familiar texts on walking are actually operating.

I enjoyed sharing Solnit's insights, but I'd (unrealistically) been expecting more, and found it a bit disappointing that so many "obvious" topics didn't get a look in. Wordsworth's walk to Italy gets detailed coverage, but there's no mention of Thomas Coryat, who did much the same walk (and subsequently walked from England to India!) two centuries earlier. One of my favourite 19th century travellers, George Borrow (admittedly, a rider as much as a walker) is also overlooked. Nor is there anything about Heine, Novalis, and the rest of the German romantics with their core idea of the Wanderer - which is particularly odd, because the Naturfreunde and Wandervogel movements they inspired get discussed quite extensively. And given the amount of literature it's inspired, it's surprising how little attention she pays to refugee-walking. Primo Levi's walk home from Auschwitz is mentioned only in passing, and there's nothing much about all the many books about being forced to leave your home on foot in wartime.

A good start, but someone really should write "A history of walking" one day! show less

This was a pretty great read, an interesting take on the walking culture, geography, and social patterns. It was far more academic than I expected, which when I write it out like that sounds snobbish but really it is neither praise nor criticism, just something of note about my experience reading it. I took a class where spatial theory and psychogeography played a key role and I felt like this book could have been usefully applied there. That said, Solnit's approach is way more accessible than reading de Certeau or especially Lefebre, which is definitely a good thing about this book. It's interesting and readable and educational.

I started reading it before taking a trip to Cuba, and thinking so much about travelling really put me into show more my pedestrian mind because I'm very much a walker when I'm in cities and when I'm in travel mode. I'm most often walking to commute, but even that type of walking is also so much more than commuting, which is what Solnit points out especially in the first part of the book. Walking as protest and rebellion was also wonderfully detailed, although it kept making obvious for me the sides of the picture that are left out. Because the focus is walking there is always this presumption of able-ness, of an able-bodied reader, and practically nothing said about those for whom walking is not a clarifying, liberating, enriching experience. She says practically nothing about those who cannot walk, or cannot walk easily or painlessly.

And it's strange because she does talk about the geographical restrictions that inhibit walkers, such as suburbs or living in dangerous neighbourhoods. And she talks about walking as a female, a chapter I reached when I was in Cuba after two days of walking alone in Havana, where I was indeed reminded again and again by catcalls and comments that the streets were not for me. It was therefore disappointing not to have anything said about disability and travel, though I suspect, as she says about cycling, it would be a whole separate book. But the lack of commentary on it felt as if she hadn't found a way to make sense of her Walking = Enlightenment philosophy where disability is concerned. It felt as if she hadn't found a way to phrase things that didn't say, "sorry, but this Enlightenment is only accessible to the able-bodied." And I doubt Solnit believes that, but it's the cornerstone of this book, really.

Everything else about it made it such a good read, though, and it would've been five stars if the above were addressed. show less

“The history of walking is an amateur history, just as walking is an amateur act.”

“Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters, finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.”

“Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.”

“Walking is, after all, an activity essentially unimproved since the dawn of time.”

^Yes, I love these quotes, but these four all happen, in the first twenty pages. The rest of the narrative, is more hit or miss. I had to keep reminding myself, that this is a history of walking and all the events mentioned here do not fit snugly into, everything I show more like about this basic mode of transportation, (I am a mailman for crying out loud!). That said, I found much of this history of walking, a bit dry. Yes, I can be selfish. Sue me, but please, do not get me wrong- Solnit is a fine writer, super smart and has really done her homework here, with meticulous precision. She did leave out bird walking, which has really helped spark my interest in strolling through various meadows and woods but there I go again, being self-absorbed.
To her credit, she does close it out, beautifully:

“This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.” show less