Is there a book on the GLOBAL history of walking?

February 14, 2022 12:03 PM

There once was an Ask about walking the streets that had a lot of flaneur and Solnit’s Wanderlust in it, but I’ve seen criticism that even Solnit primarily wrote of western history. Are there any similar such books that take a more global perspective?
posted by bixfrankonis to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

It's been decades since I read it, but as I recall Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines was about walking not just in Australia but everywhere.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:21 PM on February 14, 2022

I really loved Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. It's not exactly a global perspective as he is a British writer writing from the point of view of a white British man, and much of it does take place in England and Scotland, but he does in walk paths outside of Europe as well.
posted by desuetude at 6:16 PM on February 14, 2022

I haven't finished Antoine de Baecque, Une histoire de la marche, so I can't (yet) tell you how global it is. It does address transhumance among the Lapps and the Sioux as well as French shepherds, pilgrimages in India and Japan as well as the road to Compostela, and I think there are other global points of comparison. I should return to it!
posted by brianogilvie at 12:02 PM on February 15, 2022 [2 favorites]