Horizon

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As someone who has broadened the notion of what it means to be both a world traveler and a profoundly curious writer, it’s no wonder that National Book Award–winning author Barry Lopez, now 74 years old and battling terminal cancer, has given us a work so expansive it can only be named Horizon. Lopez has visited more than 70 countries, and though his book is loosely divided into just six regions — from the Oregon Coast to the Transantarctic mountains — it wanders off course with the regularity you’d expect from a seasoned explorer. Lopez’s facility in drawing parallels between cultures, the natural environment, and his own experiences makes Horizon much more than a travelogue or a memoir; it’s a deeply personal and fluid meditation on a devastated and devastatingly beautiful world — and what happens next depends entirely on human compassion. It’s a book infused with urgency and wisdom, written by someone who has, as much as possible, seen it all. Recommended By Renee P., Powells.com

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
THE NEW YORK TIMES - NPR - THE GUARDIAN

From pole to pole and across decades of lived experience, National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez delivers his most far-ranging, yet personal, work to date. Horizon moves indelibly, immersively, through the author's travels to six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica.

Along the way, Lopez probes the long history of humanity's thirst for exploration, 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, a Native American emissary who found his way into isolationist Japan, and today's ecotourists in the tropics. And always, throughout his journeys to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on the globe, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world.

"Literary journalism, memoir and travelogue: so compelling it deserves its own genre." The Washington Post

"A sense of vibrancy shivers throughout the book; Lopez's glittering prose becomes a concentrating mechanism. Superb . . . challenging and symphonic; a beautiful book, 35 years in the writing, but still speaking to the present moment." The Guardian (UK)

"Revelatory. . . Attentive in the world, rigorous on the page, morally inquisitive and bracingly candid, Lopez is a writer of conscience who illuminates the nexus between natural and human history." Booklist (Starred Review)

"Lopez is a natural philosopher in an almost literal sense, sharing his observations on the natural world and how different cultures have made sense of it, and one another. His ruminations take us around the globe and across the sweep of time, [with] meditations on travel, humankind's impact on the environment, and the painful effects of colonialization on indigenous populations." Library Journal (Starred Review)

Barry Lopez is the author of two collections of essays; 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 contributes regularly to both American and foreign journals and has traveled to more than seventy countries to conduct research. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundations and has been honored by a number of institutions for his literary, humanitarian, and environmental work.