INNER NAVIGATION: Why We Get Lost and How We Find Our Way

On a trip to Cologne Belgium in 1948, Jonsson left the train station before dawn and headed toward the Rhine. Jonsson was sure he was heading west, and even though he saw the sun rising over the river ahead of him, he continued to be "turned around" for days, thinking that west was east and vice versa. Similar tales of mis- and disorientation make up much of this chatty book. With dozens of examples, the author shows how we create cognitive maps—a mental sense of how to navigate an area based on landmarks—and explains why such maps can work only if we have both a good sense of direction ("direction frame") and sense of location ("dead reckoning system"). If either of these is faulty, he argues, then so is our cognitive map, and we'll remain misoriented no matter what we do. Like Jonsson watching the sunrise in the "west," we'll privilege our illusory maps over what we absolutely know is true. The book plays the same few notes again and again, flirting dangerously with tedium. Fortunately, many of Jonsson's stories are intriguing, especially those involving Saharan and arctic guides. That Jonsson's ideas are based solely on anecdotal evidence is bothersome, but he defends them convincingly, and one hopes that future experiments will bear them out. (Feb.)