On Trails

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A globe-spanning adventure through history, philosophy, science, nature and travel writing to discover how trails – from the miniscule to the massive – help us understand the world around us.

From the dawn of animal life to the digital era and on every scale of life, from microscopic cells to herds of elephants, we can be found relying on trails. While thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about those paths and set off travelling the globe to explore trails of all kinds.

Weaving together history, philosophy, science, nature and travel writing, On Trails reveals how the oft-overlooked trail 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 humanity’s relationship with nature and technology shaped world around us? And, ultimately, how does each of us pick a path through life?

We join Moor as he hikes through unexpected and delightfully surprising places, from the Appalachian Mountains to hunting down long-lost Cherokee trails, exploring the routes of termites and naked mole-rats carving tunnels through the earth to tracing the tangled neural pathways of a human brain and the internet.

Piece by piece, Moor reveals a breath-taking panoramic view of how pathways act as an essential guiding force on this planet and powerfully shows that without trails, we would truly be lost.

Waterstones’ Best Travel Writing
A Telegraph Best Travel Book
A Guardian Bookshop’s Best Nature Writing
Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award

‘Terrific, richly mapped and deeply felt and thought’ ROBERT MACFARLANE
'A wanderer's dream' THE ECONOMIST
'Marvellous' THE TELEGRAPH
‘An incredible history of why we walk in the paths and roads we do’ GRANTA

© Robert Moor 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027