bFrom the author of iThe Old Ways iand iUnderlandi, an eloquent and compulsively readable reminder that, though we're laying waste the world, nature still holds sway over much of the earth's surface. --Bill McKibbenb p bWinner of the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and a finalist for the Orion Book Awardb pAre there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland That is the question that Robert Macfarlane poses to himself as he embarks on a series of breathtaking journeys through some of the archipelago's most remarkable landscapes. He climbs, walks, and swims by day and spends his nights sleeping on cliff-tops and in ancient meadows and wildwoods. With elegance and passion he entwines history, memory, and landscape in a bewitching evocation of wildness and its vital importance.