UNITED STATES AUTHOR · HISTORY · TRAVEL
Tony Horwitz
Also known as: Horwitz Lander Tony
Anthony Lander Horwitz (June 9, 1958 – May 27, 2019) was an American journalist and author who wrote articles and several books. He won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He wrote about subjects including American history and society.
When I was thirteen, my parents bought a used sailboat, a ten-foot wooden dory that I christened Wet Dream.
— from Blue Latitudes, 2002
Most acclaimed
Blue Latitudes
2002
"James Cook's three epic journeys in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. When he embarked for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time he died in 1779, during a bloody clash in Hawaii, the map of the world was substantially complete. Cook explored more of the earth's surface than anyone in history - sailing from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from Tahiti to Siberia, from Easter Island to the Great Barrier Reef - and introduced the West to an exotic world of taboo and tattoo, of cannibalism and ritual sex. Yet the impoverished farmboy, who broke the bounds of social class to become Britain's greatest navigator, remains as mysterious today as the uncharted seas he sailed more than two centuries ago.". "In Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz sets off on his own voyage of discovery. Adventuring in Cook's wake, he relives the captain's journeys and explores their legacy in the farflung lands Cook opened to the West. At sea, aboard a replica of Cook's ship, he works atop a hundred-foot mast, sleeps in a narrow hammock, and recaptures the rum-and-lash world of eighteenth-century seafaring. On land, he meets native people - Aboriginal and Aleut elders, Maori gang members, the king of Tonga - for whom Cook is alternately a heroic navigator and a villain who brought syphilis, guns, and greed to the unspoiled Pacific. Accompanied by a carousing Australian mate, he meets Miss Tahiti, visits the roughest bar in Alaska, and uncovers the secret behind the red-toothed warriors of Savage Island. Throughout, Horwitz also searches for Cook the man: a restless prodigy who fled his peasant boyhood, and later the luxury of Georgian London, for the privation and peril of sailing off the edge of the map."--BOOK JACKET.
A voyage long and strange
2008
The bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening voyage to pre-Mayflower America On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he’s mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown’s founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America. An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs—these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers. Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek—from Florida’s Fountain of Youth to Plymouth’s sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges—Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.
One for the road
A dull job, boring relationships. Life was a yawn when Lucy Christie decided to hit the road with her best friend. But she didn't know just how much her dream vacation--a drive down Route 66 in search of no-questions-asked, guilt-free sexual encounters--would shake things up.Her first conquest was Joshua, a cowboy with fancy boots and hips made for sin, a man who filled in every gap in her previously limited sexual education. In fact, he was so good, Lucy regretted having to give him up. But when she tried moving on to the next "drive-by seduction," her demanding lover tagged along...intent on seducing her stop after stop!