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by Barry Lopez
A vivid, poetic, capacious work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters - human, animal, and natural - that have shaped an extraordinary life.
Taking us nearly from pole to pole - from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on the earth - and across decades of lived experience, Barry Lopez, hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "one of our finest writers," gives us his most far-ranging yet personal work to date, in a book that moves indelibly, immersively, through his travels 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.
As he takes us on these myriad travels, Lopez also probes the long history of humanity's quests and explorations, including the prehistoric peoples who trekked across Skraeling Island in northern Canada, the colonialists who plundered Central Africa, an enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific, a Native American emissary who found his way into isolationist Japan, and today's ecotourists in the tropics. Throughout his journeys - to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on the globe - and via friendships he forges along the way with scientists, archaeologists, artists and local residents, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world.
Horizon is a revelatory, epic work that voices concern and frustration along with humanity and hope - a book that makes you see the world differently, and that is the crowning achievement by one of America's great thinkers and most humane voices.
"Starred Review. The author's chapter on talismans - objects taken from his travels, such as 'a fist-size piece of raven-black dolerite' - is among the best things he has written...Exemplary writing about the world and a welcome gift to readers." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. While not a memoir or travelog, this first-person account is ideal for anyone who likes nature writing that also manages to bring philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and history to bear with a personal guide." - Library Journal
"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...and his curiosity so infectious that readers will be captivated." - Publishers Weekly
"Barry Lopez is a straight-up magnificent writer. To read Horizon is to be transported to wondrous landscapes far beyond the pale, and thereby obtain an astounding perspective on our increasingly uncertain future. Lopez expresses faith that our species can avert annihilation by investing 'more deeply in the philosopher's cardinal virtues': courage, justice, reverence, and compassion - virtues this book possesses in abundance." - Jon Krakauer
"A celebration and investigation of the impulse to explore, Horizon is itself an exploration - of both the human and inhuman worlds. In his intensity, his clarity, and his capacity for wonder, Barry Lopez is unmatched." - Elizabeth Kolbert
"A huge-hearted, wise and sorrowful book by the Philosopher-King of Gaia. A masterpiece." - Joy Williams
"Riveting, seductive, and beautifully written. I don't know of any other writer who so mesmerizingly, so seemingly effortlessly, weaves together art, science and poetry - I found myself underlining sentences on every page. Barry Lopez is one of my literary heroes." - Andrea Wulf
"Nobody journeys like Barry Lopez. He's humble, he's ethical, he's honest, he's curious, he's doubtful, he's properly sad and he's wild. He wakes us up to the worth and the mystery of the world...A glorious book, gloriously told." - Colum McCann
"An essential voice in American writing. Barry Lopez's stories of inquiry and discovery are gloriously riveting, bringing the reader into a research boat, an archaeological site, a night-tent conversation, water forty feet under the edge of an ice shelf... A master work." - Jane Hirshfield
"No one has worked harder to make sense of our present civilization than Barry Lopez, and in these chronicles we get to share the travels that helped shape his extraordinary mind and heart. A great gift to us all." - Bill McKibben
"The world is vast, and so are the heart and the curiosity of Barry Lopez. His voice is incomparable and necessary. No one else alive, to my knowledge, thinks so carefully about the moral dimensions of landscape." - David Quammen
"I am astonished by this book, and delighted by its deep musicality. The scope and depth of Horizon are staggering - it is symphonic in scale and tone, and as contrapuntal as a Bach fugue." - John Luther Adams, Pulitzer-Prize winning composer
This information about Horizon was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Barry Lopez is the author of two collections of essays; several story collections; Arctic Dreams, for which he received the National Book Award; Of Wolves and Men, a National Book Award finalist, and Crow and Weasel, a novella-length fable. He contributes regularly to both American and foreign journals and has traveled to more than 70 countries to conduct research. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundations and has been honored by a number of institutions for his literary, humanitarian, and environmental work. Additional information at barrylopez.com.
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In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
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When all think alike, no one thinks very much
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
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