The Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself In The Modern City

A literary history of walking From Dickens to ZizekCan you get lost in a crowd? It is polite to stare at people walking past on the street? What differentiates the city of daylight & the nocturnal metropolis? What connects walking, philosophy & the big toe? Can we save the city - or ourselves - by taking the pavement?
There is no such thing as the wrong step; every time we walk we are going somewhere. In a series of riveting intellectual rambles, Matthew Beaumont retraces a history of the walker from Charles Dicken's insomniac night rambles to wandering through the faceless, windswept monuments of the neoliberal city including Edgar Allen Poe, Andrew Breton, H G Wells, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys & Ray Bradbury. As the author shows, the act of walking is one of escape, self-discovery, disappearances & potential revolution, & explores the relationship between the metropolis & its pedestrian life.