Walking: One Step at a Time by explorer Erling Kagge may just be the best book about walking you’ve ever read ... an important secret will reveal itself via beautiful, flowing prose, as wise and soothing as the voice it suggests ... you’ll be hooked. You’ll see that this is not an ordinary book about walking, precisely because it’s just, as in only, about walking. And though the concepts of meditation and inner peace are present and in some places suggested, this is not a new age book, nor one about meditation, nor about the evils of rushing and the big city ... [This is] a book that is part rumination, part walking coach and companion, a small book of thought, only a few minimal illustrations sprinkled throughout like crumbs on a path, and one that might just do more for your health and happiness than your treadmill alone ever could.
The book has a bit of everything, including beautiful stories like the all-day walk a 35-year-old blind woman in Kenya took with her 6-month-old child to visit the doctor who was in town for just one day. Kagge philosophizes a bit, refuting arguments that 'risky expeditions [are] playing with death' ... There’s the obligatory criticism of screen time and the pace of modern life that any writing about something as age-old as ambulation will contain, but this is far from familiar recitation. And above all it’s sincere, Kagge’s love of walking leaping off the page as he argues that 'walking expands time rather than collapses it.'
This translation by Crook draws upon works by numerous writers, combining their insights with Kagge's own questions to create a work that challenges readers to take steps toward a better understanding of one's self and finding a peaceful place in the scheme of life ... Recommended for all libraries, especially collections on the environment. The poetic and inspirational words will remind readers of Henry David Thoreau's work by the same name
