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...

A lyrical account of an activity that is essential for our sanity, equilibrium, and well-being, from the author of Silence ("A book to be handled and savored." —The Wall Street Journal) Placing one foot in front of the other, embarking on the journey of discovery, and experiencing the joy of...

Escape your commute into an immersive narrative history where ordinary people spark monumental global shifts. Feel the cobblestones underfoot and hear the ringing of harbor bells as you navigate bustling ancient markets, remote desert caravans, and grimy industrial factories. This vivid journey...

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

For readers of On Trails, this is an incisive, utterly engaging exploration of walking: how it is fundamental to our being human, how we've designed it out of our lives, and how it is essential that we reembrace it. "I'm going for a walk." How often has this phrase been uttered by someone with a...

From New York magazine’s architecture critic, a walking and reading guide to New York City—a historical, cultural, architectural, and personal approach to seven neighborhoods throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, including six essays that help us understand the evolution of the city...

'Fiery and addictive . . . A national treasure' GUARDIAN 'I love this book. Blummin' marvellous' LEE MACK 'This isn't just a brilliant book. It's a necessary one' FRANK COTTRELL BOYCE Born in working-class Liverpool in 1952 to devoted members of the British Communist Party, Alexei Sayle has...

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was...

Bloomsbury presents The Pathless Land: Finding a Way Across Ireland by Tim Hannigan, read by Stephen Perring An epic journey on foot from Dingle to Burr Point in search of Ireland’s lost footpaths, and a quest to unravel the complexities of countryside access in Ireland and Britain. Ireland is...

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...

Turn your commute or armchair travel into an immersive walking tour of Nordic architecture and European history. Guided by the voice of a passionate architect, navigate shifting coastlines, medieval timber settlements, and modern waterfronts. It is an atmospheric journey where every brick...

Step into the dust and glory of ancient history with an immersive journey into biblical archaeology. Perfect for a mindful commute or deep learning, this vivid audio experience turns silent ruins into bustling, atmospheric urban centers. Feel the crunch of gravel and the heat of the Near Eastern...

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...