Fantastic book.

„We need to puncture the self-importance of the age with regular contact with older, deeper, wider sources of feeling: through contact with a natural world that pursues its own priorities with little reference to our own sagas, through the reading of history books that shrink our modern-day adventures and convulsions to a more manageable and rightful size, and through travel to countries that take no interest in our own peculiar national preoccupations, scandals and triumphs.“