In the age of toxic masculinity and “mansplaining,” in a country in which most violent crimes are committed by men, Brad Wetzler’s Into the Soul of the World offers a powerful, profound, and deeply personal road map for actively cultivating a different kind of manhood. As a young journalist in the 90s, Wetzler had it all: an amazing, enviable job as a travel and adventure journalist that sent him all over the world on assignments; a home in beautiful Santa Fe; a loving marriage. At the height of magazine journalism, Wetzler’s passport was littered with stamps, and he edited and wrote features for high-profile magazines like the New York Times, George, National Geographic, and many others. He originated the Outside magazine story idea to send Jon Krakauer to Mount Everest basecamp. Krakauer climbed the mountain, and his article about his experience during a fatal storm later became the international bestselling book and hit movie, Into Thin Air.

But then the demons and trauma from his childhood caught up with him, and he sunk into a depression that increasing amounts of prescription drugs could not solve, and soon found himself divorced, essentially house-bound, and physically unhealthy.

He hit rock bottom when a friend – who was on a similar cocktail of medications — died by suicide. Into the Soul of the World traces his road to recovery, from a checkpoint in Palestine to the cave of a 100-year-old yogi in India. He kicks the drugs, finds yoga, moves to Colorado, and learns — through the love of friends, animals, and a hard-won spiritual awakening that can’t be put into any particular dogmatic box — to be a man that is not celebrated often enough. A man of wisdom, kindness, insight, tenderness, and sensitivity.

Through energetic and lively prose, Wetzler takes us inside the heart and mind of a man who refuses to conform to society’s restrictive notion of manhood, and instead presents a new path for men to walk. This is not an easy path, Wetzler is clear, but we’ve never needed it more