EditorNavigating the Modern World, One Ancient Skill at a Time
Ever found yourself hopelessly lost—without a GPS, compass, or even a vague sense of direction? Maybe you’re stranded in the woods, or perhaps you’re just trying to figure out which way is north while wandering through an unfamiliar city. Don’t fret, because The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth is here to bring you back to the basics. In this book, Huth takes us on a journey through the ancient art of navigation, all while exploring how modern technology (and our dependency on it) has made us… well, a bit directionally challenged.
Let’s face it: GPS is great until it leads you to a dead end in the middle of nowhere. But before satellites and smartphones, humans were navigating the world with nothing more than the stars, the sun, and a bit of intuition. Huth delves into these ancient techniques with a captivating mix of historical insight and practical application. From reading the night sky to using landmarks and natural clues, this book teaches you how our ancestors could navigate vast landscapes without a single digital map in sight.
Buy Now at Amazon: The Lost Art of Finding Our Way for $26.00 (paperback)
What makes this book such a great read for preppers and wanderers alike is its blend of survival skills and intellectual curiosity. Huth doesn’t just leave you with a bunch of facts—he paints a picture of how these ancient methods were not only practical but vital to the way our ancestors survived and thrived. You’ll learn to use the sun’s position, weather patterns, and even the flow of water to orient yourself, and it all feels a bit like a treasure hunt with a side of science.
For those of us who can’t seem to remember which way we’re facing without a little help from Siri, this book is a delightful wake-up call. It’s the perfect blend of adventure, history, and self-reliance, and it’s packed with enough quirky facts to keep you flipping pages long after you’ve learned your way around the stars.
The Bottom Line: If you’re looking for a solid, quirky, and insightful read on how we used to get around without our smartphones, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way is a must-have for any prepper’s library. It’s more than just a guide to navigation—it’s a call to reconnect with the world around us, to trust our instincts, and to rediscover the lost art of knowing where we are.
Buy Now at Amazon: The Lost Art of Finding Our Way for $26.00 (paperback)
From the Publisher
Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances using only environmental clues and simple instruments. John Huth asks what is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way. Encyclopedic in breadth, weaving together astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, and ethnography, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way puts us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
Haunted by the fate of two young kayakers lost in a fog bank off Nantucket, Huth shows us how to navigate using natural phenomena―the way the Vikings used the sunstone to detect polarization of sunlight, and Arab traders learned to sail into the wind, and Pacific Islanders used underwater lightning and “read” waves to guide their explorations. Huth reminds us that we are all navigators capable of learning techniques ranging from the simplest to the most sophisticated skills of direction-finding. Even today, careful observation of the sun and moon, tides and ocean currents, weather and atmospheric effects can be all we need to find our way.
Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 specially prepared drawings, Huth’s compelling account of the cultures of navigation will engross readers in a narrative that is part scientific treatise, part personal travelogue, and part vivid re-creation of navigational history. Seeing through the eyes of past voyagers, we bring our own world into sharper view.
Product details
- Publisher : Belknap Press; Reprint edition (November 1, 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 544 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0674088077
- ISBN-13 : 978-0674088078
- Item Weight : 1.86 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.02 x 1.36 x 9.25 inches
Buy Now at Amazon: The Lost Art of Finding Our Way for $26.00 (paperback)
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