A Field Guide to Getting Lost - Softcover

Solnit, Rebecca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143037242 ISBN 13: 9780143037248

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2006

Synopsis

A stimulating exploration of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown from the author of Men Explain Things To Me

Written as a series of autobiographical essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Rebecca Solnit's life to explore issues of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place. Solnit is interested in the stories we use to navigate our way through the world, and the places we traverse, from wilderness to cities, in finding ourselves, or losing ourselves. While deeply personal, her own stories link up to larger stories, from captivity narratives of early Americans to the use of the color blue in Renaissance painting, not to mention encounters with tortoises, monks, punk rockers, mountains, deserts, and the movie Vertigo. The result is a distinctive, stimulating voyage of discovery.

About this title

Review:

"An intriguing amalgam of personal memoir, philosophical speculation, nature lore, cultural history, and art criticism."
--Los Angeles Times

"An altogether sublime collection. . . she sees in the act of embracing the unknown a gateway to self-transcendence."
--Maria Popova, Brainpickings.org

"This indespensable California writer's most personal book yet, alive as ever to the subtle nuances of the natural world, but newly responsive to the promptings of her own heart and history."
--San Fransisco Chronicle

"This meditation on the pleasures and terrors of getting lost is . . . a series of peregrinations, leading the reader to unexpected vistas."
--The New Yorker

"An ode to losing yourself and finding out what's on the other side of familiarity. For Ms. Solnit . . . getting lost is more than a matter of merely physical circumstances. It's a state of mind to be embraced and explored, a gateway to discovering more about yourself in relation to the rest of the world."
--The Dallas Morning News

Book Description:

Solnit's revelatory modern classic exploring philosophy, history, art and metaphysics

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0143037242
• ISBN 13: 9780143037248
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224