Walking History

> Walking is not as well known as Thoreau's other works Walden, The Maine Woods, and Civil Disobedience. But it is a good place to start exploring his writing because it was his last book, in 1862, published by the Atlantic Monthly shortly after his death. It is less well known because it is general, as opposed to singular, in focus. It is his summing up of his thoughts on life: One should saunter through life and take notice; one need not go far.

What does it mean to be out walking in the world, whether in a landscape or a metropolis, on a pilgrimage or a protest march? In this first general history of walking, Rebecca Solnit draws together many histories to create a range of possibilities for this most basic act. Arguing that walking as history means walking for pleasure and for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit homes in on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture.

Brought to you by Penguin. Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in 20th-century British history. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world. There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts...

The year is 1933. Even in a world with free energy, robot labor, and megacorporations, nothing could stop the collapse of the American dream. As the world-spanning Great Depression rages on, the remaining New York-based mafias clash with police for control of the broken city. Elias Roche, former police officer turned Mafia enforcer, works to maintain a tenuous peace between the two parties. 

Brought to you by Penguin. The extraordinary early life in India and England of one of the world's leading public intellectuals Where is 'home'? For Amartya Sen home has been many places - Dhaka in modern Bangladesh where he grew up, the village of Santiniketan where he was raised by his...

Brought to you by Penguin. George III, Britain's longest-reigning king, has gone down in history as 'the cruellest tyrant of this age' (Thomas Paine, eighteenth century), 'a sovereign who inflicted more profound and enduring injuries upon this country than any other modern English king' (WEH...

Humans are the only mammals to walk on two, rather than four, legs. From an evolutionary perspective, this is an illogical development, as it slows us down. But here we are, suggesting there must have been something tremendous to gain from bipedalism. First Steps takes our ordinary, everyday...

Get ready for a one-of-a-kind audio experience: discover Florence through intimate, guided audio walking tours of the city's most historic and enchanting quarters. There are four guided tours for you to listen to as you walk through Florence, plus essential Italian words and phrases that every traveler wants to know.

Brought to you by Penguin. At night the senses become reordered. Hearing becomes privileged over vision, and we edge forward arms outstretched, feeling our way through the inky blackness. It is after dark that the human being becomes more ‘animal’, more sensitive to Nature. But the lights of...

The New England Masterworks Collection gathers ten works connected with New England life, literature, history, reform, and imagination.

This is a book about ten women over the past three hundred years who have found walking essential to their sense of themselves, as people and as writers. Wanderers traces their footsteps, from eighteenth-century parson's daughter Elizabeth Carter—who desired nothing more than to be taken for a vagabond in the wilds of southern England—to modern walker-writers such as Nan Shepherd and Cheryl Strayed.

At the turn of the 19th century, one mile east of Grand Marais, Minnesota, you would have found Chippewa City, a village that as many as 200 Anishinaabe families called home. Today you will find only Highway 61, private lakeshore property, and the one remaining village building: St. Francis Xavier Church. In Walking the Old Road, Staci Lola Drouillard guides listeners through the story of that lost community, reclaiming for history the Ojibwe voices that have for so long, and so unceremoniously, been silenced.

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery, the story of a Texas man who, during the Great Depression, walked around the world -- backwards. Like most Americans at the time, Plennie Wingo was hit hard by the effects of the Great Depression. When the bank foreclosed on his small restaurant in...

The landscape of the British Isles is filled with history, much of which we miss as it flashes past the car window. Do we even realise that we're following the same path as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, or that we're driving past the exact spot where King Harold was killed, shot through the eye with an arrow? As a lover of both history and the British countryside, Charlie Connelly decided to rectify this, and set out on a series of walks that recreate famous historical journeys. En route he retells the story of the original trip while discovering who and what now inhabit these iconic routes.

From Shawn Leonard, Indigenous medium and host of Spirit Talker, comes a guide for assembling your unique team of spirit totem animal guides to be your personal guides through your life. We are deeply connected to the animal nation, and through the four stages of life—Childhood, Youth...

Ever since Jurassic Park we thought we knew how dinosaurs lived their lives. In this remarkable new book, Brian J. Ford reveals that dinosaurs were, in fact, profoundly different from what we believe, and their environment was unlike anything we have previously thought. In this meticulous and...

For readers of Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Nothing to Envy, this is a breathtaking real-life story of four street children in contemporary Zambia whose lives are drawn together and forever altered by the mysterious murder of a fellow street child. Based on years of investigative reporting...

What difference does it make that Jesus was Jewish? In this unabridged audio download of Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus, Lois Tverberg challenges readers to follow their Rabbi more closely by reexamining his words in the light of their Jewish context. Doing so will provide a richer, deeper...

Hard Border goes to the very roots of the Irish boundary where, after decades of division and conflict, a fragile peace has prevailed since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Post-Brexit, it will re-emerge as the only land frontier between the United Kingdom and the European Union. In his travelogue of the abandoned 50-mile route along the Ulster Canal, Darach MacDonald presents a close-up narrative history of Ireland.

An inspiring selection of hand-picked adventures, chosen and narrated by Ed Stafford. For those who don’t mind a bit of discomfort in order to experience the wilder side of our amazing planet. Open your mind and reboot your soul with these unforgettable adventures. Get a taste of total freedom...