A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

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Product Details
Price
$32.50  $30.23
Publisher
Scribner Book Company
Publish Date
Pages
512
Dimensions
6.5 X 9.1 X 1.5 inches | 1.55 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781501183058

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About the Author
Kevin Fedarko has spent the past twenty years writing about conservation, exploration, and the Grand Canyon. He has been a staff writer at Time, where he worked primarily on the foreign affairs desk, and a senior editor at Outside, where he covered outdoor adventure. His writing has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, and Esquire, among other publications. His first book, The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon, which won a National Outdoor Book Award and the Reading the West Book Award, was a New York Times bestseller. He lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Reviews
"Readers will appreciate the buddy-comedy element throughout as Fedarko shares his and McBride's steps, missteps, and arguments along the way, all supplemented nicely by McBride's photographs. A Walk in the Park, though, particularly inspires when Fedarko shifts away from the tourist aspect of the canyon, detailing the ancestral history of the land and some of the Indigenous voices who continue to fight against overdevelopment today amid everbooming visitor numbers." --Booklist
"An immersive account of the challenges of a grueling 750-mile hike through the Grand Canyon. . . . Fedarko expansively describes the journey . . . with a combination of dry humor and horror, and he pays tribute to the spare beauty, grandeur, and silence of a place that few have seen, resulting in a memorable reading experience." --Kirkus (starred review)
"Part memoir, part travelogue, part extended essay on the profound meanings of wilderness, A Walk in the Park is a paean to one of earth's most spectacular places, and a testament to the irresistible pull this mighty landscape exerts over human beings. Fans of Bill Bryson, Cheryl Strayed, and Edward Abbey will love this rich, funny, and spirited work from the Grand Canyon's most eloquent bard. Fedarko's bushwhacking, boulder-hopping, scree-slipping odyssey makes for delightful reading, and underscores the essential truth that mystics and penitents down through the ages have always known: Put one foot in front of the other, and magical things will follow." --Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and The Wide Wide Sea

"I love this book. It's an insane premise, an implausible journey through an incomprehensible landscape, undertaken by people who are life-threateningly stubborn to a degree that is, itself, insane. What they accomplished is, by contrast, startlingly real." --S. C. Gwynne, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of the Summer Moon

"While fighting for survival on a blistering journey through one of the world's most formidable and spectacular landscapes, not only does Fedarko carry us deep into the Grand Canyon, he pulls us back in time to dwell with the region's native peoples whose legacy and ancestors he refuses to ignore, wrestling with the right and just stewardship of the place. You will laugh, cry, and shake your head in marvel as he and his best buddy, adventure photographer and filmmaker Pete McBride, struggle mightily, and you will be moved by this deeply personal journey and triumph of will." --Dean King, nationally bestselling author of Skeletons on the Zahara and Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite

"Fedarko's prose is often funny, but he also pays appropriate respect to both the land and the native people that have called it home for thousands of years." --Columbia Magazine
"A Walk in the Park is a triumph. Fedarko doesn't describe awe; he induces it, with page-turning action, startling insights, and the kind of verbal grace that makes multipage descriptions of, say, a flock of pelicans feel riveting and new. . . . Readers will be tempted to visit the canyon just to keep the book's spell alive longer--and to feel Fedarko's company in their awe." --Blair Braverman, The New York Times Book Review
"Passionate . . . memorable . . . life-affirming." --Wall Street Journal
"The book is its own wonder, one of nature and adventure and humanism that earns its place on the same rarefied shelf that is home to Edward Abbey and John McPhee." --Air Mail
"An exciting adventure, a compelling drama and a moving romance that illustrates how the people we love and the places we admire find equal space in our hearts. It reminds us of how wondrous our natural world is and how we must do our best to help it continue to thrive for generations to come." --BookReporter
"Complex, rich, and fascinating . . . What really draws the reader in is Fedarko's writing style--familiar and approachable while at the same time compelling and mesmerizing. Perhaps there is no other writer as capable of capturing in words the beauty of this magnificent chasm than he." --Durango Telegraph