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Annie Dillard, <strong>The</strong> Div<strong>in</strong>g Bell and <strong>the</strong> Butterfly by Jean-Dom<strong>in</strong>ique Bauby, A Field Guide to Gett<strong>in</strong>g<br />
Lost by Rebecca Solnit, <strong>The</strong> Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies, Thoughts <strong>in</strong> Solitude by Thomas<br />
Merton, and <strong>the</strong> <strong>in</strong>comparable Walden by Henry David Thoreau.<br />
Adventure tales offer<strong>in</strong>g superb <strong>in</strong>sight <strong>in</strong>to solitude, both its horror and its beauty, <strong>in</strong>clude <strong>The</strong> Long<br />
Way by Bernard Moitessier, <strong>The</strong> Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomal<strong>in</strong> and<br />
Ron Hall, A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, Into <strong>the</strong> Wild by Jon Krakauer, and Alone by Richard<br />
E. Byrd.<br />
Science-focused books that provided me with fur<strong>the</strong>r understand<strong>in</strong>g of how solitude affects people <strong>in</strong>clude<br />
Social by Mat<strong>the</strong>w D. Lieberman, Lonel<strong>in</strong>ess by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Quiet by Susan<br />
Ca<strong>in</strong>, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman, and An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks.<br />
Also offer<strong>in</strong>g astute ideas about aloneness are Cave <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> Snow by Vicki Mackenzie, <strong>The</strong> Life of Sa<strong>in</strong>t<br />
Anthony by Sa<strong>in</strong>t Athanasius, Letters to a Young Poet by Ra<strong>in</strong>er Maria Rilke, <strong>the</strong> essays of Ralph Waldo<br />
Emerson (especially “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (especially “Man Alone with<br />
Himself”), <strong>the</strong> verse of William Wordsworth, and <strong>the</strong> poems of Han-shan, Shih-te, and Wang Fan-chih.<br />
It was essential for me to read two of Knight’s favorite books: Notes from <strong>the</strong> Underground by Fyodor<br />
Dostoyevsky and Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer. This book’s epigraph, attributed to Socrates,<br />
comes from <strong>the</strong> C. D. Yonge translation of Diogenes Laërtius’s third-century A.D. work <strong>The</strong> Lives and<br />
Op<strong>in</strong>ions of Em<strong>in</strong>ent Philosophers.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Hermitary website, which offers hundreds of articles on every aspect of hermit life, is an <strong>in</strong>valuable<br />
resource—I spent weeks immersed <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> site, though I did not qualify to become a member of <strong>the</strong> hermitonly<br />
chat groups.<br />
My longtime researcher, Jeanne Harper, dug up hundreds of reports on hermits and loners throughout<br />
history. I was fasc<strong>in</strong>ated by <strong>the</strong> stories of Japanese soldiers who cont<strong>in</strong>ued fight<strong>in</strong>g World War II for decades<br />
on remote Pacific islands, though none seemed to be completely alone for more than a few years at a time.<br />
Still, Hiroo Onoda’s No Surrender is a fasc<strong>in</strong>at<strong>in</strong>g account.<br />
And <strong>the</strong>n <strong>the</strong>re’s <strong>the</strong> story of <strong>the</strong> last survivor of an Amazon tribe. In 2007, after several failed attempts<br />
to make peaceful contact with this man, who once fired an arrow <strong>in</strong>to <strong>the</strong> chest of a rescue worker, <strong>the</strong><br />
Brazilian government provided him with a thirty-one-square-mile region of ra<strong>in</strong> forest. <strong>The</strong> land is offlimits<br />
to everyone except this man. He traps animals for food. He has been completely alone for about<br />
twenty years. Now that Chris Knight resides <strong>in</strong> society, this man, whose name is unknown—as is <strong>the</strong> name<br />
of his tribe and <strong>the</strong> language he speaks—may be <strong>the</strong> most isolated person <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> world.