A Field Guide to Getting Lost [Paperback]

“An intriguing amalgam of personal memoir, philosophical speculation, natural lore, cultural history, and art criticism.” —Los Angeles Times

From the award-winning author of Orwell's Roses, a stimulating exploration of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown

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.Praise for A Field Guide to Getting Lost:

Solnit has been compared to both Annie Dillard and Susan Sontag . . . her own work resembles a richly conceived character, capable of sudden turns and sharp twists, changing direction from book to book and page to page in ways that, in retrospect, are nevertheless consistent with what she's done before. [A Field Guide to Getting Lost] has something close to perfect pitch, an intermezzo in an increasingly impressive career.  
—The Nation

An altogether sublime collection. . . she sees in the act of embracing the unknown a gateway to self-transcendence.
—Mls$