What does it mean to lose yourself—and why might it be the key to discovery?
In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, award-winning writer Rebecca Solnit blends memoir, philosophy, natural history, and art criticism into a luminous meditation on uncertainty. Through a series of essays, she revisits moments of desire, grief, and wonder that reveal how disorientation can open new paths.
Her personal reflections extend outward, connecting to captivity narratives, Renaissance art, punk rock, and even Hitchcock’s Vertigo. From deserts to city streets, from tortoises to monks, her writing captures the landscapes—both inner and outer—that shape us.
This is not just a book about wandering. It is about what we find when we stop trying to know everything, and allow ourselves to be lost.
