On Looking: A Walker's Guide to the Art of Observing the World Around You

Robert B.: Having a hard time getting through the first chapter. Waiting for her to go on walks with experts but so far it's just her trying to sound like an expert by quoting the same two references over and over... don't think I'm gonna make it to chapter 2.

Canada on Mar 04, 2023

Harriet Cummins: Bought as a gift and went down very well!

United Kingdom on May 03, 2021

S D HOLLOWAY: This book is phenomenal. It makes you realise how much you miss in everything that surrounds you. From minute fossils in stones to the font used on store front signs. I take much more notice now as I walk about in London or wherever I am.

United Kingdom on Jan 28, 2020

Bernie Gourley: This is a field guide to getting the most out of walks in the city; though it’s presented through a series of essays. City-centeredness is the book’s niche. There are tons of books that teach one how to get more out of the subtle signs and signals seen in nature, but we tend to miss the nature (and a good deal of the culture) in our city walks because we view them in a utilitarian fashion and because there is so much shouting for our attention that it’s easy to miss nature’s subtle cues.

The book consists of 12 chapters—each of which is organized around a city walk. Eleven of these walks are with experts who offer the author (and her readers) greater insight into some dimension of the city walk experience that is often lost to the limits of our attention. When I use the word “expert,” I use it broadly. The reader may find some of these individuals more worthy of the title “expert” than others—e.g. two among them are the author’s 19 month old son and her dog—but they all offer a unique insight. [You may recognize the author’s name from a popular book she wrote on dog behavior, and that’s a particular area of interest for her.] Others are the kind...

United States on Jul 11, 2017

Dr Ali Binazir: A fabulous blogger whom I hold in great respect turned me on to this book. And who was I to resist eleven walks with expert eyes? If the whole point of life is to see a little better, then I'm all for a book that can expand my vision.

Here's some of what I really liked about the book:
-- The expert walk vignettes are very engaging, and Horowitz has a beautifully poetic writing style. The book is a joy to read. I finished it in two sittings, one of them late into the night. This is thriller-level readability, folks.
-- The experts really do have super x-ray vision in their domains. Their vision is so different, in fact, that when you enter their world, you feel as if you're moving around in a virtual reality overlay of a whole new dimension. Plants, animals, insects, rocks, letters, sounds you had never considered, all rise to attention's surface in 3-D relief.
-- The book is a bounty of fun esoteric facts: Raccoons can fit through a four-inch hole; squirrels, a quarter-size one; mice, dime-sized. The word "thigmotaxic" rocks. Instead of teeth, slugs have a "radula", a jagged tongue-like thing that leaves spiral marks on tree bark. Dogs first smell with the right...

United States on May 23, 2014

Maggie: I took this book with me on vacation and really enjoyed it.
It is about living in the moment and being aware of the world that
is happening around you.
Told in an easy fashion, Alexandra Horowitz is an author that captures
the reader's interest from the first line.
I will be buying another book by this author.
Seller was great.

Canada on Oct 29, 2013

Yehezkel Dror: In my writings I will cite the book as helping, inter alia, to understand the role of advisors to rulers. Thus, intelligence assessments can be viewed as guide books to ambiguous futures, with the intelligence advisors accompanying the decision makers on a trip beyond the horizon -- adding to what she sees and understands.
Still, I enjoyed Inside of a Dog much more. On Looking is easy and pleasant to read if one does not expect too much. But its real importance lies in demonstrating the need for multiple perspectives, though regretfully this is not explicated as required.
The author does well in combining theoretical explanations with descriptions of her augmented sensory inputs, such as on seeing and hearing. But at least a few paragraphs on the philosophy and theory of multiple perspectives, subjective worlds (as discussed in her earlier book) and "theories of the mind", not to speak about Plato's Cave, would have added depth to the book and given real significance to the important but not adequately developed statement about each one of us being "captured...by the inside of our own heads" (p. 263).
Professor Yehezkel Dror
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

United Kingdom on Mar 17, 2013