On Trails: An Exploration

On Trails: An Exploration

Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award
â€œThe best outdoors book of the yearâ€ â€”Sierra Club
A New York Times Bestseller

A Best Book of the Yearâ€”as chosen by The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Amazon, National Post, New York magazine, The Telegraph, Booklist, The Guardian Bookshop

From a debut talent whoâ€™s been compared to Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, David Quammen, and Jared Diamond, On Trails is a wondrous exploration of how trails help us understand the worldâ€”from invisible ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet.

In 2009, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet: How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own? Over the course of the next seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds, from the miniscule to the massive. He learned the tricks of master trail-builders, hunted down long-lost Cherokee trails, and traced the origins of our road networks and the Internet. In each chapter, Moor interweaves his adventures with findings from science, history, philosophy, and nature writingâ€”combining the nomadic joys of Peter Matthiessen with the eclectic wisdom of Lewis Hydeâ€™s The Gift.

Throughout, Moor reveals how this single topicâ€”the oft-overlooked trailâ€”sheds new light on a wealth of age-old questions: How does order emerge out of chaos? How did animals first crawl forth from the seas and spread across continents? How has humanityâ€™s relationship with nature and technology shaped world around us? And, ultimately, how does each of us pick a path through life?

Moor has the essayistâ€™s gift for making new connections, the adventurerâ€™s love for paths untaken, and the philosopherâ€™s knack for asking big questions. With a breathtaking arc that spans from the dawn of animal life to the digital era, On Trails is a book that makes us see our world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew.
Country USA
Brand Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer Simon & Schuster
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2016-07-12
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781476739212

Country	USA
Brand	Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer	Simon & Schuster
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2016-07-12
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781476739212

On Trails: An Exploration

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