On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes Author: Visit Amazon's Alexandra Horowitz Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1439191255 | Format: EPUB
On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes Description
From Booklist
It is charming to take a walk with Horowitz. Engaging, amusing, and relatable, the psychology professor guides readers through 11 urban walks in the company of various experts. Beyond simply looking, this is about what makes up the world around us and the foundations of human perception. Horowitz brings the same attention to the human brain as she brought to our canine companions in Inside of a Dog (2010). She makes cognitive functioning eminently understandable by unraveling the role expectation plays in limiting what we see. The experts she walks with, from scientists to a toddler and a dog, reveal the underpinnings of a wide range of urban phenomena, such as the uncanny ability of rats to avoid traps. The descriptions of the walks are detailed but not overlong, with just enough information to give a taste of a geologist’s or typographer’s expertise. Even when relying only on your own inexpert eyes, you will look at the world with more attention after reading these fascinating essays, though it’s likely you still won’t be able to find millennia-old worm tracks or recognize the fishlike behavior of pedestrians. --Bridget Thoreson
Review
"Supplemented by recent research in cognitive psychology and biology, her book is an informative and often charming 21st-century Thoreauvian guide on how to transform physical transport into mental and sensory transportation -- and 'be here now.'"
- Glenn C. Altschuler, The Oregonian"In this elegant, entertaining book, Horowitz exhorts readers to learn, or to re-learn, how to see what we pass as we walk through our cities and towns."
- Boston Globe“Horowitz writes like a poet, thinks like a scientist, and ventures like an explorer. Her book will have you looking in a new way at the world around you, and make you glad you did.” (Susan Orlean
Rin Tin Tin)
"These eleven exquisite, clever and and tenderly recounted small adventures remind me of something I learned back when I lived in India: the need to perceive "the scent behind the smell." Alexandra Horowitz has attempted much the same thing with her eyes - much aided by the seeing of others - and has in consequence become increasingly successful in perceiving what one might call "the sight behind the scene." Her resulting epiphanies are available to us all, if we take care to learn from her, in this lovely book, just how it is done." (Simon Winchester
author of The Map that Changed the World and Krakatoa)
"Alexandra Horowitz's new book is as wonderful as her first.
Inside of a Dog helped us to imagine the worlds of our beagles, collies, greyhounds and mutts.
On Looking teaches us that the world is just as rich, strange and charmed when seen through the eyes of our local artists, doctors, architects and toddlers.
On Looking also teaches us that Alexandra Horowitz is a writer to watch." (Jonathan Weiner
author of Beak of the Finch and Long for this World)
See all Editorial Reviews
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Scribner (January 8, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1439191255
- ISBN-13: 978-1439191255
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
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