Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking is a wide-ranging cultural history that examines walking as a physical, philosophical, and political act. Solnit, an essayist and historian, traces walking from ancient pilgrimage to contemporary protest marches, from the strolls of Romantic poets to the perambulations of urban flaneurs. She examines how walking has been gendered (with women's mobility historically restricted), how city design has encouraged or impeded pedestrianism, and how walking for pleasure is a relatively modern development. The book includes chapters on mountaineering, on the politics of public space, on treadmills and the suburbanization that made walking obsolete for many Americans. Solnit writes with the essayist's freedom to digress and connect; chapters move unpredictably through time and topic. Yet a coherent argument emerges: walking is essential to the examined life, and the disappearance of walkable spaces threatens more than convenience. Wanderlust is a defense of slowness against acceleration, of embodied experience against virtualization. Solnit's prose is elegant and her learning worn lightly. Essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between body and mind, in urban planning, or in recovering a pace of life that allows for thought.