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An Amazon Editors Pick and featured in USA Today’s hottest releases and The Washington Post’s 10 New Books Spotlight.

This One Wild and Precious Life is my latest book and below are all the details, resources, links and fun bits that you might need as a reader, journalist, or otherwise. The book took me three years to research and write (while hiking around the world!) and I now dedicate my life to continuing the conversation via IG Lives, my podcast, a Live Nation tour and bookclubs (see below)

The short synopsis

Sarah Wilson takes readers on a “soul’s journey” through the complexities of climate change, coronavirus, the racial injustice, our loneliness and our disconnection from what matters…to find a way back to the life we feel we ought to be living.

She hikes around the world for three years, following in the footsteps of Nietzsche, poets and scientists, sharing wild, hopeful wisdoms and vibrant solutions to arrive at a true path through the despair. It is the revolutionary guidebook we need right now.

You can read a full description of the book here. 

This One Wild Precious Life was published on August 30, 2020 (Pan Macmillan Australia), December 29, 2020 (US, Harper Collins) January 21, 2021 (UK, Harpers Collins) with more territories to come.

Where to buy the book

In Australia: Booktopia, Amazon Australia, Dymocks and Readings
In the USA and Canada: Amazon USA
In the UK: Amazon UK

You can also get it on Kindle here and other ebooks here and for Audio (I read the book myself), you can buy it here.

I have also written a post that highlights various bookstores around the world that offer discounts on my books periodically. You can check it out here.

What people are saying

“Sarah Wilson is a force of nature – quite literally. She has taken her pain and grief about our sick and troubled world and alchemized it into action, advocacy, adventure, poetry, and true love.” 

-Elizabeth Gilbert

“Sarah Wilson is a traveler of worlds – outer and inner. In the midst of the collective malaise, she zeros in on her determination to live her life, not someone else’s, and on the work to which we all are summoned if this species is to survive. Her work is, as the world is, both wild and precious.”

– James Hollis, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst and author 

“Sarah’s courageous book illuminates a path to preserve and cherish this Wild and Precious life.”

– Dr Martin Rice, The Climate Council

“While you might not agree with her every point about climate change and capitalism, you will be hooked by Wilson’s almost stream-of-consciousness thoughts on how to make our shared planet a healthier home. Best savored in small bites rather than raced through, Wilson’s fierce opinions and impassioned journey will spark soul searching, activism, and contemplative hikes through the woods.“

– Amazon Book Review

“This practical actionable, spiritual guidebook proposes a path to joy even amid pandemics, climate change, social injustice, and other profound crises.

– USA Today

“The timing of this book couldn’t be more critical. Sarah takes us on a series of wild hikes around the world and shows us how inherently connected to nature we truly are, while also shedding light on how desperately we need to find a new path in our changing world. Wild and Precious speaks to my soul.” 

–Emilie Ristevski, wilderness photographer @helloemilie

“Her thought-provoking call to action shines light on the personal fog and spiritual trauma experienced while living with consumerism, climate change, COVID-19, social injustice, and collective anxiety. […] this book is inspiring.” 

   –Booklist

“Anxiety and disconnection are natural consequences of overconsumptive modern life, argues Australian journalist Wilson (First, We Make the Beast Beautiful) in this vibrant take on how to build a more joyful existence and sustainable world. […] The author ranges widely, interspersing personal stories with interviews, scientific research, and quotes from religious texts, making for a reading experience that has the feel of an impassioned conversation with a friend […] engaging prose and timely advice.”

-Publishers Weekly

Here’s where you find all the science and source references

I don’t include all the references in the book. It would cost too many trees and look ugly. So, as promised in the book, I’ve assembled them in one handy online spot, with hyperlinks and page numbers here.

The great climate resources I promise

I also promised in the book to include great carbon counters, online programs and apps that you can download immediately so you can get engaged in saving this wild and precious life today. I’ve put them here.

I’m doing a Wild Live Nation Tour

It kicks off in June 2021. You can grab a ticket to the Australian and New Zealand shows here!

I have a Wild podcast

My podcast WILD launched on Wednesday 27th January. It continues the conversation that I started in Wild and Precious. Each episode I invite a guest to come chat new ways to radically love and save our “one wild and precious life” on this planet and learn practical techniques for doing so. Listen (and subscribe!) here.

There’s a hiking guide, too

I outline the details of all the hikes in the book on my new website Sarah Wilson Hikes.

Oh, and a Bookclub program

Why don’t you create your own bookclub to discuss the meaty issues in Wild and Precious. I’ve done a bookclub guide, which you can download as a PDF and get started with a group of friends straight away, jump over to my blog post about it for all the links. 

If you’d like me to join your online Bookclub, you can email [email protected]

I get asked this a lot

So why did you write this book? Because I was feeling an anxious despair that went beyond my own internal anxiety and pain, which is what I had explored in First, we make the beast beautiful. I knew we were all feeling it, particularly around the destruction of our planet and life as we love it, and no one was really talking about it at a spirit/soul/nature level. We were talking about carbon emissions and plastic-free July and getting frustrated and devastatingly sad. This was not how life was meant to go! We are better than this! We have become “small humans” when we really want to live a big life! I knew intuitively there was a better way… a wilder, more connected, #giveashit, more meaningful way. I wanted to find it.

Is this book a follow-on from First, We Make The Beast Beautiful?  Yes. With Beast, I went inward to chat about our personal anxiety and angst. But since it came out a few years back, I realised we are feeling anxious at a collective level. Like, all of us. It’s a global fear and despair that stems from our disconnection. I decided it was time to take the journey outwards, into the world so that we can connect to each other and the planet and life as a whole again.

What techniques do you share for reconnecting with life? I try to make all the full-on information accessible by discussing it while hiking in beautiful places in the world – I head to Crete, Jordan, the Cradle Mountain hike, Sierra Nevada, the central desert of Australia, Japan and a pirate route in the south of England. One of the chapters is on becoming a “soul nerd” (how to dive into cool art and philosophical realms), another is about learning to deep read again, as a way to get awake and alive to life. There’s a long chapter on how to consume less.

Read more of my answers about the book here. (Feel free to copy and paste anything I’ve written here for your article, review, blogpost etc.)

Some awesome interview questions

Should you need them when we chat, my friend Lincoln Younes interviewed me for an IGTV and I got him to send me some of his quirkier questions. You can find them here.

  • At what point does lack of awareness stop becoming a reasonable excuse? When is it a social responsibility?
  • Do you forget what you write?
  • Did the covid pause give us enough struggle to think we can carry on the way we’ve been living? Or has it woken enough of us up to forge ahead bravely?
  • You seem to trust your comedic wit more in writing than in person, why?
  • Walking a different way back from the shops each time. What happens if you don’t?
  • Nietzsche. Are there any men like him these days? If so, whom?
  • Do you think loneliness is positive for anything? Like Jerry (Seinfeld) says in that podcast (with Tim Ferriss) about depression being an annoying side effect that doesn’t generate creativity… is that the same with loneliness? 
  • Are you more anxious or less this year?
  • “I choose perilous and interesting” – is it a conscious choice or chosen for you?
  • Can you be a prophet and have a normal life?
  • What are the dangers of opulence in our times?
  • What lately has directed your noble existence pursuit?
  • How can we delay gratification in this new world order?
  • What would you say to or ask Trump given 10mins in a room with him?