A Wired Most Fascinating Book of the Year

"If you want to understand what rats can teach us about better-planned cities, why walking into a different room can help you find your car keys, or how your brain's grid, border, and speed cells combine to give us a sense of direction, this book has all the answers."
--The Scotsman

"Fascinating...makes a compelling case that our ancient abilities to get from A to B aren't just a matter of geography."
--New Statesman

"If this was only a science book about how we navigate--Inuit methods, explorers' feats, extraordinary animal abilities, brain scans, men v women--it would be compellingly good. However, Michael Bond goes further: he weaves in stories of people who got lost, from long-distance walkers to dementia sufferers...And threaded through the book is a thoughtful argument about how our ability to find our way is integral to our nature--and how it is being undermined by technology."
--Sunday Times

How is it that some of us can walk unfamiliar streets without losing our way, while others struggle even with a GPS? Navigating in uncharted territory is a remarkable feat if you stop to think about it. In this beguiling mix of science and storytelling, Michael Bond explores how we do it: how our brains make the "cognitive maps" that keep us orientated and how that anchors our sense of wellbeing. Children are instinctive explorers, developing a spatial understanding as they roam. And yet today few of us make use of the wayfinding skills that we inherited from our nomadic ancestors.

Bond tells stories of the lost and found--Polynesian sailors, orienteering champions, early aviators--and explores why being lost can be such a devastating experience. He considers how our understanding of the world around us affects our psychology and how our reliance on technology may be changing who we are.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Belknap Press
Published: 08/17/2021
ISBN: 9780674260412
Pages: 304