Five continents. Ten countries. Twenty Natural World Heritage sites in five years. When one family set out to consider what wildness and wilderness mean to people around the world, their journey revealed something very different from the picture-perfect notion of untouched nature they imagined. In the Name of Wild is the story of what they learned. What draws us to seek out wild places? Do they mean the same to everyone? The Vannini family expected to encounter pristine landscapes, but from the moment they set foot on the Galápagos Islands, romantic ideals crashed up against tourist-clogged realities. The wilderness is a busy place. Adventurers are there to conquer it.

Conservationists are there to protect it. Tourism operators are there to make a dollar off it. TV crews, bloggers, and Instagrammers are there to record it. Part travelogue, part ethnography, In the Name of Wild takes us into the lives of people who call places like Tasmania, Patagonia, and Iceland home. As we meet local residents we learn that wildness has never been about the absence of people. This brilliantly conceived, beautifully told account reveals that wild is instead really about connections, kinship, and coexistence with the land.