New Travel Book: ‘The Wild Places’

Travel Blog  •  Frank Bures  •  08.07.08 | 10:41 AM ET

imageAuthor: Robert Macfarlane

Released in U.S.: June 2008

Travel genre: Wilderness travel

Territory covered: Britain, Ireland

Promo copy: “Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? That is the question that Robert Macfarlane poses to himself as he embarks on a series of breathtaking journeys through some of the archipelago’s most remarkable landscapes. He climbs, walks, and swims by day and spends his nights sleeping on cliff-tops and in ancient meadows and wildwoods. With elegance and passion he entwines history, memory, and landscape in a bewitching evocation of wildness and its vital importance. A unique travelogue that will intrigue readers of natural history and adventure, The Wild Places solidifies Macfarlane’s reputation as a young writer to watch.”

Critical verdict, Zagat-style: It’s “anything but twee ... a formidable consideration by a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence—poetry, really—with the breathless ease of a master angler, a writer whose ideas and reach far transcend the physical region he explores.” (International Herald Tribune) His “language is as surprising and precise as his environments” and he “takes the reader on both a geographical and a philosophical journey, as mind-expanding as any of his wild places.” (Publisher’s Weekly) “I didn’t want Macfarlane’s journey to end—and wonderfully enough, it hasn’t. His descriptions have created a new map of Britain and Ireland in my mind.” (Don George in National Geographic Traveler)

Find it: Amazon, Powell’s, publisher



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