In this “marvel of storytelling,” a journalist pursues the mysteries of human navigation across continents and deep within the brain (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision—especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. In Wayfinding, M.R. O’Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush, and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate.

O’Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the brain, and how exercising our cognitive mapping skills can improve the health of our hippocampus. She also talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression, and PTSD.

Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species’ profound capacity for exploration, memory, and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place.