I relate to the authors quest for quiet as I cultivate pure quiet in my home and life. As a person who is seeking more quiet I can appreciate his need for the quest to escape civilization.  I found his story profound and relatable to today's world of noise.  Quiet is hard to achieve in the US but it can be accomplished . Throughout this book I appreciated the authors viewpoint on quiet and how critical it is to our health.  I believe quiet is the key to intelligence, valuable learning and good mental health. It was a delight to read this book about a subject that is not popular in mainstream society . Well Done to the author.

A high anxiety account of a very scary journey through the Arctic.

This was a simple and short read about the importance of silence in our busy, everyday lives.  I appreciated the author's philosophy about silence and the many ways we lose (and can easily find) it.  Some chapters were more relevant than others.  At times, I wanted more practical suggestions of things to do to try and increase the "silence" in my life.  Overall, the book was a bit abstract in that regard, but I loved the author's tone and simple writing style.  The images throughout were also calming and beautiful.  I am glad to have had the chance to read this book.

As a teen librarian, I do not think this title would appeal to my patrons, otherwise I would consider purchasing it for my library's collection.

Finally essays about silence are being given press in the main stream media, and my reading this title conincided well with the article
Meghan O’Rourke wrote recently for The NY Times travel pages.  It is probably impossible to find silence in the US for more than a random couple minutes. I moved to a mountain
community steps from National Forest land expecting to find it, what does offer small consolation is the profound peace to be found living day to day with a visual landscape of mostly not man made objects.