Description
Description
From the National Book Award-winning writer, humanitarian, environmentalist and author of the now-classic Arctic Dreams a vivid, poetic, capacious work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters--human, animal, and natural--that have shaped his extraordinary life. Poignantly, powerfully, it also asks How do we move forward? Taking us nearly from pole to pole--from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on the earth--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 through decades of his life as it describes his travels to six regions of the world: from the Oregon coast where he lives to the northernmost reaches of Canada; to the Galapagos; to the Kenyan desert; to Botany Bay in Australia; and in the resounding last section of this magisterial book, unforgettably to the ice shelves of Antarctica.
As he revisits his growing up and 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 and a Native American emissary who arrived in Japan before it opened to the West. He confronts today's ecotourism in the tropics and visits the haunting remnants of a French colonial prison on รle du Diable in French Guiana. Through these journeys, and friendships forged along the way with scientists, archeologists, artists and local residents, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world.
With tenderness and intimacy, Horizon evokes the stillness and the silence of the hottest, the coldest and the most desolate places on the globe. It speaks with beauty and urgency to the invisible ties that unite us; voices concern and frustration alongside humanity and hope; and looks forward to our shared future as much as it looks back at a single life. Revelatory, powerful, profound, this is an epic work of nonfiction that makes you see the world differently: a crowning achievement by one of our most humane voices--one needed now more than ever.
As he revisits his growing up and 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 and a Native American emissary who arrived in Japan before it opened to the West. He confronts today's ecotourism in the tropics and visits the haunting remnants of a French colonial prison on รle du Diable in French Guiana. Through these journeys, and friendships forged along the way with scientists, archeologists, artists and local residents, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world.
With tenderness and intimacy, Horizon evokes the stillness and the silence of the hottest, the coldest and the most desolate places on the globe. It speaks with beauty and urgency to the invisible ties that unite us; voices concern and frustration alongside humanity and hope; and looks forward to our shared future as much as it looks back at a single life. Revelatory, powerful, profound, this is an epic work of nonfiction that makes you see the world differently: a crowning achievement by one of our most humane voices--one needed now more than ever.
About the Author
About the Author
BARRY LOPEZ is the author of three collections of essays, including Horizon; 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 contributed regularly to both American and foreign journals and traveled to more than seventy countries to conduct research. He was the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundations and was honored by a number of institutions for his literary, humanitarian, and environmental work. He died in 2020. www.barrylopez.com
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"At once reverie and urgent appeal, Horizon is beautiful and brutal--a story of the universal human condition, set in some of the most distinctive places on earth."
--The New York Times Book Review "Epic. . . . The crowning achievement of a legendary scribe."
--Outside Magazine "Sublime, dreamlike. . . . Lopez is a welcoming host as he brings you across the world."
--NPR "Literary journalism, memoir and travelogue: so compelling it deserves its own genre."
--The Washington Post "Extraordinary. . . . A capacious blend of popular science, travel writing and autobiography."
--The Wall Street Journal
"A contemporary epic. . . . Superb . . . challenging and symphonic; a beautiful book, 35 years in the writing, but still speaking to the present moment."
--The Guardian
"An interrogative autobiography. . . . In Horizon, Lopez is remapping the world, revisiting places of surprising starkness and beauty, bring[ing] enormous questions down to earth by rooting them in a series of landscapes."
--Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Review of Books
"Part autobiography, part cri de coeur . . . Lopez writes with fervid wonder and fascination about all he's seen and experienced."
--The Atlantic
"A touchstone author whose nonfiction and fiction alike have inspired artists in multiple disciplines. . . . Lopez's visionary descriptions of landscapes are startling in their immediacy."
--The Seattle Times
"Subtle, monumental, rich, spare: this opus by acclaimed writer Lopez contains and transcends contradictions."
--Nature
"Lopez is a master of the big question. . . . He writes with transporting precision."
--Christian Science Monitor
"Epic. . . . Lopez is a thoughtful and careful curator, sweeping the planet to understand not only its topography but also the cultural geography of humans and the relationship between the two.
--Minneapolis Star Tribune
"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. At each place where he turns his eye and mind, something is learned of existence's richness and meaning. A master work. This book is a map to treasures everywhere buried."
--Jane Hirshfield "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
--The New York Times Book Review "Epic. . . . The crowning achievement of a legendary scribe."
--Outside Magazine "Sublime, dreamlike. . . . Lopez is a welcoming host as he brings you across the world."
--NPR "Literary journalism, memoir and travelogue: so compelling it deserves its own genre."
--The Washington Post "Extraordinary. . . . A capacious blend of popular science, travel writing and autobiography."
--The Wall Street Journal
"A contemporary epic. . . . Superb . . . challenging and symphonic; a beautiful book, 35 years in the writing, but still speaking to the present moment."
--The Guardian
"An interrogative autobiography. . . . In Horizon, Lopez is remapping the world, revisiting places of surprising starkness and beauty, bring[ing] enormous questions down to earth by rooting them in a series of landscapes."
--Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Review of Books
"Part autobiography, part cri de coeur . . . Lopez writes with fervid wonder and fascination about all he's seen and experienced."
--The Atlantic
"A touchstone author whose nonfiction and fiction alike have inspired artists in multiple disciplines. . . . Lopez's visionary descriptions of landscapes are startling in their immediacy."
--The Seattle Times
"Subtle, monumental, rich, spare: this opus by acclaimed writer Lopez contains and transcends contradictions."
--Nature
"Lopez is a master of the big question. . . . He writes with transporting precision."
--Christian Science Monitor
"Epic. . . . Lopez is a thoughtful and careful curator, sweeping the planet to understand not only its topography but also the cultural geography of humans and the relationship between the two.
--Minneapolis Star Tribune
"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. At each place where he turns his eye and mind, something is learned of existence's richness and meaning. A master work. This book is a map to treasures everywhere buried."
--Jane Hirshfield "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
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub date:
2020-01-07
Length:
592 pages
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