Wayfinding

The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World

By: M. R. O'Connor

Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt

At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human.

In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision - especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate.

O’Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression and PTSD.

Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place.

"O'Connor talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn. There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent book - devouring it makes for a good start." --Kirkus Reviews

©2019 by M. R. O’Connor. “The Experiment with a Rat,” by Carl Rakosi, on page 173, from The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 1986). Permission granted by Daniel K. Nordby, Literary Executor for the Estate of Carl Rakosi (aka Callman Rawley). (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Book #1 2021

What seamlessly connects neurology and zoology with sociology, psychology, and anthropology. I would recommend this book to those who wish to expand knowledge on navigation and to those who seek to understand more about how we all are connected. Thank you for the time well spent!

Well-researched, grounded, imaginative, delightful

This book was recommended to me and might not have been something I picked up on my own, but I’m really glad I did. I thought the book was a perfect balance between research and storytelling. It thoroughly explores the history and science of human navigation, and like all good research, it leaves you not only with fascinating answers, but with new questions.

I liked the performance a lot too, and thought the narrator did great with all the multi-lingual pronunciation!

I learned a lot, including things about colonialism in Australia I had known absolutely nothing about, and I didn’t expect to be as moved as I was by a discussion of navigation. It helps explains small things you’ve undoubtedly experienced just by virtue of being human, and also gives some concrete (and concerning) projections about the future of human minds in the age of auto-navigation.

If you are interested in navigation, human psychology, or just like learning new things, I highly recommend this book.

Does’t stay on point

The author wrote this book to gloat of her travels, pretend to have knowledge of global change (provides no evidence or scientific evidence of, just accepts it based on hearsay). She wanders all over the place going way off topic. The book stated known facts but provided no new scientific information. I believe she wants to live in a mud hut and get lost in the woods for most of her life.