What this book is not: eleven walks along the same route with experts in eleven different fields. What this book is: eleven walks in a variety of places, with companions who might or might not be “expert” depending on your definition. (I’d vote that the geologist and field naturalist certainly would, the toddler and dog probably wouldn’t.) Nor was this book a play-by-play of the things the experts pointed out as they walked – or at least, not predominantly. And, I’d argue, it probably COULDN’T be, given the written medium. I think this book’s promise would have made for an excellent video series, where you could capture the sights, sounds, and details as each expert points them out. You can’t really do that in a book unless you have A LOT of pictures (which this book does not). So, given the constraints of the medium, it’s probably not surprising that each chapter only loosely follows the walk with the expert, and reads more like loosely-connected trivia around a theme, with the occasional digression into the science of attention and observation. It’s not a bad book for what it is, but it’s not what I was expecting, either. I really do wish there were a video series that does a similar investigation. (Or, honestly, that I had a sabbatical and a rich patron so that I could recreate the experience around my own home.)