Horizon
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
'Horizon is magnificent; a contemporary epic' Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland
From the author of the classic Arctic Dreams comes a vivid recollection of his travels around the world and the encounters that shaped an extraordinary life.
Taking us nearly from pole to pole - from modern megacities to some of the earth's most remote regions - Barry Lopez gives us his most far-ranging and personal work. Spanning decades of travel, Horizon describes journeys to six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica.
Lopez also probes the history of humanity's quests and explorations, from prehistoric expeditions to today's ecotourism. He takes us to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on the globe, via friendships with scientists, archaeologists, artists and local residents, in a book that makes us see the world differently. It is the crowning achievement of one of the world's best travel writers.
'The greatest nature writer in the world ... He is also the greatest travel writer ... [an] astounding new memoir' Sunday Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A globe-trotting nature writer meditates on the fraught interactions between people and ecosystems in this sprawling environmentalist travelogue. Essayist Lopez (Arctic Dreams) recounts episodes from decades of his travels, most of them tied to scientific investigations: camping on the Oregon coast while considering the exploits of British explorer James Cook; examining archaeological sites in the high Arctic while reflecting on the harshness of life there; hunting for hominin fossils in Kenya while weighing human evolution; scuba-diving under an Antarctic ice shelf while observing the rich marine biota. His free-associative essays blend vivid reportage on landscapes, wildlife, and the knotty relationships among the scientists he accompanies with larger musings on natural history, environmental and climate crises, and the sins of Western imperialism in erasing indigenous cultures. It's often hard to tell where Lopez is going with his frequent digressions: one two-page section skitters from global cancer rates past a one-eyed goshawk he once saw in Namibia to an astrophysics experiment at the South Pole to detect dark matter, with no particular conclusion. Still, his prose is so evocative during a tempest at sea, "veils of storm-ripped water ballooned in the air around us" amid "the high-pitched mewling of albatrosses, teetering impossibly forty feet away from us on the wind" and his curiosity so infectious that readers will be captivated. Photos.
