"In Motion" marks Tony Hiss's thirteenth book and follows the award-winning "The Experience of Place." His books have explored subjects as varied as train travel, Hunanese cooking, giant pandas, the story of his family, and the future of New York City. He was a staff writer at "The New Yorker" for more than thirty years, has lectured around the world, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He lives in New York with his wife, writer Lois Metzger, and their son.
""The Experience of Place" has gone on to become a modern-day
classic . . . In his new book, "In Motion: The Experience of
Travel, " Hiss revisits his earlier technique: Take a proposition
that appears intuitive, then slowly tease out its implications for
the way we live now, and how we should live going forward. 'Deep
Travel' begins with the assumption that when we take a trip,
something sublime can change the way we perceive the world . . .
Hiss takes the principle a step further, arguing that this same
sense of transformation--what he calls 'Deep Travel' --can also be
enjoyed in the more modest trips we take every day: running to the
store, commuting to work, walking within our own neighborhoods . .
. In search of source material, Hiss embarks on his
characteristically ambitious survey of science and the humanities,
quoting everyone from Lewis Thomas to Thomas Mann, Henry David
Thoreau to E.O. Wilson, Copernicus to 'Bugs Bunny' director Chuck
Jones . . . "In Motion" is itself an example of the author's
recurring point--that the mind can even travel deeply when its
owner is at rest." --Danny Heitman, "The Christian Science
Monitor"
"Interesting and ambitious . . . "In Motion "ranges widely over
continents and time frames, leaping from idea to idea. . . Like
[Bruce Chatwin's] "The Songlines, " Hiss's book is full of evidence
of his impressively wide reading and intelligent speculation,
replete with strange discoveries and serendipities" . . .
"[It]""has an enjoyably erratic and discursive structure, moving
from anthropologists studying the first human footprints in the
grasslands of Africa to Neil Armstrong's first steps on the
moon."--William Dalrymple, "The New York Times Book Review"
"Intriguing and immediately connected to our lives today . . . "In
Motion "will certainly set minds in motion, heading deeper into the
roving nature of humanity." --Christine Thomas, "The Miami
Herald"
" "
""In Motion "is an unusually ambitious book: an attempt to explain
not only why humans travel, and how Deep Travel can transform us,
but how Homo sapiens' awareness evolved during the past 3.6 million
years." -Jeff Greenwald, "San Francisco Chronicle "
" "
"Crowded airplanes and their lack of customer service, packed
subway cars on a hot day, and daily commutes to and from work that
take longer now on average than at any other time in history and
add up to much frustration with travel itself. Hiss ("The
Experience of Place) "suggests, however, that all of us have an
innate capacity to enter a different part of our minds during our
travels and to begin to make use of an awareness that has its own
range of interests, concerns, and methods. When the mind and not
just the body is in motion, our experience of our ordinary world
changes, and we can look with new eyes on the details of the world
around us as we walk to the local coffee shop. Hiss urges us to
embrace the innermost dimension of travel (its ability to lift the
wings of the human spirit) as a way of transforming our time spent
in motion. Hiss calls this ground-shifting waking consciousness
"Deep Travel," that is, something that surprises us when we least
expect it. For example, as biochemist Katy B. Mullis drove through
redwood""country north of San Francisco, his waking consciousness
traveled along a wildly different path as he invented the technique
that makes it possible to copy billions of pieces of DNA in a few
hours and later brought him the Nobel Prize in chemistry. In the
end, Hiss shares his own enlightening experiences of the mind in
motion, acting as our Virgil of Deep Travel."
--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
"I found "In Motion" absolutely fascinating: well researched, well
written, and very readable. I read it in London, and found it
affected how I experienced a familiar but unfamiliar place. The
capacity Hiss describes had the effect of pointing out to me
something that had been right in front of my eyes all the time
without my noticing it. Such an interesting and important book."
-Lisa Alther, author of "Kinflicks"
""In Motion" is a brilliant, mind-opening book that will change how
you see your world. Tony Hiss takes you to places that are both out
there and inside your own mind, and offers a strikingly new
perspective on such basic questions as 'What makes us human?' and
'Why do we explore?' I recommend that you read it before you take
another step." --Andrew Weil, M.D.
"Dramatic evidence for humankind's bipedalism is at least as old as
the footprints discovered in the volcanic ash of Laetoli, Tanzania,
and it extends in distance to Neil Armstrong's still-preserved boot
prints on the surface of the moon. However, we have become so
habituated to this business of upright walking, to travel in
general, that we have buried the capacity to connect with the
extraordinary opportunity for insight that travel offers. Long
occupied with matters of design, environment and regional planning,
Tony Hiss turns his attention to the possibilities of larger
understanding inherent in traveling or, more precisely, what he
calls Deep Travel, that 'ground-shifting variant of ordinary waking
consciousness.' Much more than simply moving from place to place or
simply changing scenery, Deep Travel is a parallel journey that
sharpens our perceptions, altering space--creating a larger
'here'--and time--extending it, making a larger 'now.' As we
immerse ourselves in Deep Travel, insights previously hidden or
otherwise unavailable are revealed to the off-balance mind...An
intellectual walkabout filled with arresting, wide-ranging
perceptions--quite unlike any other 'travel' book." --"Kirkus "
"The high excitement of "In Motion" comes from the way Tony Hiss
can present so much cutting-edge information in a pattern that
creates a fuller and more articulate understanding of what we are.
His reporter's nose for a good story combines with a tremendous
breadth and depth of vision; the result is both fun and
mind-altering, a real eye-opener, a changer of consciousness. It's
a book not only to read but to live."--Kim Stanley Robinson
“"In Motion" is a brilliant, mind-opening book that will change how
you see your world. Tony Hiss takes you to places that are
both out there and inside your own mind, and offers a strikingly
new perspective on such basic questions as ‘What makes us human?’
and ‘Why do we explore?’ I recommend that you read it before
you take another step.” —Andrew Weil, M.D.
“Hiss shares his own enlightening experiences of the mind in
motion, acting as our Virgil of Deep Travel.” —"Publishers Weekly,
" starred review
“An intellectual walkabout filled with arresting, wide-ranging
perceptions, quite unlike any other travel book.” —"Kirkus"
“The high excitement of "In Motion" comes from the way Tony
Hiss can present so much cutting-edge information in a pattern that
creates a fuller and more articulate understanding of what we
are. His reporter’s nose for a good
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