Customer Reviews

On Foot: A History of Walking

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book appealed to me because I am a walker. In addition to being an expert long-distance hiker and backpacker, I also walk extensively throughout my town for commuting and running errands, often taking up to two hours a day to walk distances that everyone else drives in a few minutes. It's a very easy form of exercise and I buy far less gasoline than others, saving both money and natural resources. Walking also provides philosophical comfort, but in today's society it is very difficult to explain that to the car-obsessed multitudes, who seem to have forgotten that walking is even possible. Amato covers all these issues, along with walking's place in human history and in the human spirit. Walking was one of the key factors in making proto-humans into full humans, and it was the force that encouraged people to spread across the Earth and construct entire social orders and landscapes. And walking has always been an affair of the mind and soul as well, which is a key running (walking) contention throughout Amato's narrative.

Sadly, that great philosophical pretext becomes a pretty unfocused and repetitive book. After the basic philosophy is taken care of, Amato simply offers a rather watered-down cultural history of Western Europe and America, often trying to force walking-related vignettes and episodes onto an unfocused historical analysis. This analysis is too high-level and arbitrary to serve as an informative history, and also detracts from the intended focus of the book. And while it's not fair to demand that Amato cover other regions and cultures, it would be nice to learn about how non-Western cultures view the art and activity of walking (and not driving), as this could shed some real light on the obsessions with transportation and convenience that have ruined the fun for walkers in the West. Granted, the basic focus of this book remains fascinating throughout, but the overall result is boredom and disappointment. But it was still worth it for me to walk to the library to check this book out, and now I will walk back to return it. Amato, and most of his readers, will understand why I enjoy doing that. [~doomsdayer520~]

I really enjoyed the "walking" pace of the book. The pace lent itself well to stopping off at different points through history and exploring walking's relationship to them in more detail. Lots of great information... I truly enjoy the author's unique style of storytelling.

A tour de force on an inexhaustible topic! Joe Amato has a genius for providing insight into an activity most of us take for granted -- walking -- and making stirring connections to the world around us. -- R. Kelly

This book is fascinating lens through which to view the broad strokes of western history over the last 800 years. Amato writes with an approachable scholarship about the role of foot transport in western religion, class distinctions, the evolution of urban places - particularly since 1800, and walking as a bobo luxury.

His work shares a subtitle - "A history of walking" with Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust. Try them both as they complement one another quite nicely.