- A breakout book from a writer increasingly celebrated as the 21st-century bard of the American Southwest--a writer in the tradition of Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, among others. - In March 2003, Craig Childs received the Spirit of the West Literary Achievement Award, given to a writer whose body of work captures the unique spirit of the American West. - As a chronicle of adventure, as emotionally charged human drama, as confessional memoir, The Way Out is a transcendent book, a work destined to earn a lasting place in the literature of extremes. - Not since John Krakauer's bestselling Into the Wild has a book so compellingly explored the boundary between wilderness adventure and madness.

For THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE OF WATER and SOUL OF NOWHERE: 'Utterly memorable and fantastic... certainly no reader will ever see the desert in the same way again' - Washington Post 'Childs's own feats of asceticism are nothing if not awe- inspiring: he's a modern-day desert father' - New York Times Book Review

Craig Childs is a naturalist, adventurer, desert ecologist and frequent contributor to a US national radio morning programme.