IN PRAISE of WALKING: A NEW SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION (audiobook) by Shane O'Mara

 

Published by Highbridge in 2020.

Read by Liam Gerrard.

Duration: 5 hours, 46 minutes.

Unabridged

I picked up In Praise of Walking because I am a recent convert (the last 4 years or so) to the joys of walking and hiking and have personally seen it change my health. I was hoping to learn some more information about it and experience a bit of confirmation bias from an expert who told me what I already knew - walking and hiking are great forms of exercise with limited chances of injury.

While O'Mara says all of this, I think that this book has been been mis-described in by its publisher. The title is very accurate when it says that this book is "a new scientific exploration." But, the blurb description starts by describing this book as "a hymn to walking, the mechanical magic at the core of our humanity."

Calling it "a hymn" sounds like it is going to be a more literary, story-filled approach to the topic, as authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Mary Roach have done with numerous science topics. Both of them have considerable skill at making obscure scientific concepts very approachable.

If you like those authors, this book may disappoint you. It certainly did disappoint me. 

I had no problem with O'Mara's conclusions - I agree with them wholeheartedly. O'Mara asserts that walks are good for the body and the mind, that walks are a great way to connect to your environment (rural or urban), that walking can be a profoundly social experience and that urban environments must be more friendly to pedestrians.

My problem is that in a nearly six hour audiobook, O'Mara makes those (and similar) points for about half of the book. For the remainder, he often wanders off topic into areas that only vaguely support his thesis. For example, we are told about fish that "walk" for a short period in their lives and then they settle on a spot, attach themselves to a rock and never move from it again. These fish then go through a metamorphosis and absorb their eyes and their vestigial brain. Why are we told this? I think it was to support the idea that you need a brain to walk and walking around may have encouraged human brain development.

Fair enough, but that bit about the fish was tedious to listen to. I think we can all agree that humans have highly developed brains without having to go into the evolutionary steps of how we got here.  O'Mara could just skip into one of his discussions of how the brain maps out its location in the world, or how the brain seems to work better when the body is walking around (the second point was interesting, the first was sort of interesting the first time it was made, less interesting every time that followed). But we could have completely skipped the commentary on the fish that absorbs its own brain.

There was also a long discussion about urban sewage systems and how the 1800's saw a revolution dealing with human bodily waste. All of this discussion was in support of the idea that urban areas need to be more pedestrian friendly. It was a long way to go to make a tenuous connection.

He wandered so far to make these tenuous connections that I often found my mind wandering as I drove and listened during my daily commute. If the audiobook cannot hold my attention, it cannot receive a good rating.

This book just felt like it was a missed opportunity to be so much more. The interesting conclusions were buried in repetitive scientific commentary that wasn't necessarily needed. 

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: IN PRAISE of WALKING: A NEW SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION (audiobook) by Shane O'Mara.