The Walker

Can you get lost in a crowd? Is it polite to stare at people walking past on the street? What differentiates the city of daylight from the nocturnal metropolis? What connects walking, philosophy, and the big toe? Can we save the city—or ourselves—by taking the pavement?

There is no such thing as the wrong step; every time we walk, we are going somewhere. In a series of riveting intellectual rambles, Matthew Beaumont retraces a history of the walker from Charles Dickens's insomniac night rambles to wandering through the faceless, windswept monuments of the neoliberal city. He includes figures such as Edgar Allan Poe, André Breton, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and Ray Bradbury. As the author shows, the act of walking is one of escape, self-discovery, disappearances, and potential revolution, exploring the relationship between the metropolis and its pedestrian life.

The Walker is an exploration of how we move through urban spaces and what it means to wander thoughtfully through familiar and unfamiliar streets alike.