Geoff Nicholson has been walking his whole life. Wherever he is and wherever he goes in the world, he walks and writes about what he sees and feels. Here he reflects on the nature of walking, why we do it, how it benefits us and, in some cases, how it can damage and even destroy us. His recent diagnosis with a rare, incurable form of cancer has made him all too aware of his own mortality. Sooner or later there will be a last step, a last excursion, a final drift, for him just as there will be for all of us. Geoff vows to continue to walk for as long as he can. This moving, vital book describes his own walks and relates them to the walks of street photographers, artists and writers, such as Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Sophie Calle, Jorge Luis Borges and Virginia Woolf, among many others. Walking on Thin Air is a book about mortality and, above all, a celebration of being alive.

'This pithy, erudite yet resolutely unpretentious book is a celebration of the invigorating, inspiring pleasures of strolling just for the sake of it.' * Buzzmag *
‘Nicholson is a marvelously direct writer of indirect subjects who doesn’t have a lot of truck with pretense or a sense of misgiving about his subjects. He treads where he likes and doesn’t seem to care about commercialism when describing his enthusiasms. … Nicholson’s writing career has been varied, admirable and courageous. He stops to notice uncommercial and even bizarre subjects, shunning well-traveled roads. He goes where he likes. He gets out often. Nobody can imitate him.’ Tom Zoellener, LA Review of Books
‘A moving, vital book … a celebration of a life well-lived’ -- Yeah Lifestyle

Geoff Nicholson was the author of over twenty books, which have been widely translated with one made into a Hollywood film. These include the acclaimed novels Bleeding London (shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize), Gravity’s Volkswagen and The City Under the Skin, as well as the classics of psychogeographical non-fiction, The Lost Art of Walking and Walking in Ruins. He wrote for publications including the Guardian, Telegraph and New York Times, and is a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Review of Books.