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On Looking cover art

On Looking

Written by: Alexandra Horowitz
Narrated by: Alexandra Horowitz
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Publisher's Summary

From the author of the number-one New York Times mega-best seller Inside of a Dog comes an equally smart, delightful, and startling exploration of how we perceive and discover our world.

Alexandra Horowitz’s brilliant On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes shows us how to see the spectacle of the ordinary - to practice, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it, "the observation of trifles". On Looking is structured around a series of eleven walks the author takes, mostly in her Manhattan neighborhood, with experts on a diverse range of subjects, including an urban sociologist, the well-known artist Maira Kalman, a geologist, a physician, and a sound designer. She also walks with a child and a dog to see the world as they perceive it. What they see, how they see it, and why most of us do not see the same things reveal the startling power of human attention and the cognitive aspects of what it means to be an expert observer.

As the million-plus readers of Inside of a Dog have discovered, Alexandra Horowitz is charmingly adept at explaining the mysteries of human perception. Trained as a cognitive scientist, she discovers a feast of fascinating detail, all explained with her generous humor and self-deprecating tone. On Looking presents the same engaging combination, this time in service to understanding how human beings encounter their daily worlds and one another.

Page by page, Horowitz shows how much more there is to see - if only we would really look. On Looking is nutrition for the considered life, serving as a provocative response to our relentlessly virtual consciousness. So turn off the phone and other electronic devices and be in the real world - where strangers communicate by geometry as they walk toward one another, where sounds reveal shadows, where posture can display humility, and the underside of a leaf unveils a Lilliputian universe - where, indeed, there are worlds within worlds within worlds.

Alexandra Horowitz’s On Looking confirms her place as one of today’s most illuminating observers of our infinitely complex world.

©2013 Alexandra Horowitz (P)2013 Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Intriguing and attention altering

A friend who had read the paper version of the book recommended it to me. I'm so glad I opted for the audiobook because the author does a wonderful job taking the listener through all the different walks.

What I really enjoyed was how she wrapped her notes about each exploration with thoughts not just on the specific areas of expertise of her companions but also on the biological, social or psychological nuances to what was being attended to.

My favourite walks were with her child, her dog, and the blind Mrs. Gordon, but they were all interesting and informative. The next time I'm walking somewhere I expect I will attend to my surroundings and LOOK.

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Your perspective is not the only one

and it's not the most right. I am going to gift this to my nibling, when they are old enough to understand :)

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