Connelly’s travel memoir One Room in a Castle opens with an apt epigraph from Kenneth White: “The world is open before you. All you need to do—and want to do—is walk through it.” Across the Territories (Polygon), White’s most recent book of travels, describes eleven excursions that range through territories “from Orkney to Rangiroa.” These personal travel essays are not travelogue: they do not suggest an itinerary, nor do they recommend restaurants or hotels. White is a thoughtful, observant wanderer, more “beat” than Baedeker; Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North is the model that comes first to mind. White prefers to travel solo, but he always brings along a host of literary travel companions—philosophers, mystics and vagabond poets from earlier times—as mentors and guides. In Denmark he notes that “it was because of Saxo Grammaticus that I decided to go to Helsingør”; in Morocco he sits at a café in Oujda “reading a French translation of Averroës’ Decisive Treatise (Fasl al-Magal);” in Andalusia he imagines a statue of the eleventh-century Hebrew poet and Arab philosopher Salomon Ibn Gabirol hopping down from its pedestal to accompany him on his wanderings. There is what you might call an eastern aesthetic to White’s writing style: images and episodes dabbed onto the page with a paintbrush charged with colour and broader cosmic connections allusively suggested rather than baldly stated. Sometimes he can lead the reader into rather esoteric areas, but I like his attitude, and I recommend this book.