Journalist And Author
CurrentAuthor of the upcoming HELL PUT TO SHAME, due from Mariner Books (HarperCollins) in April 2024. Also wrote eight other critically applauded books of narrative nonfiction: ACROSS THE AIRLESS WILDS: THE LUNAR ROVER AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE FINAL MOON LANDINGS (HarperCollins, July 2021), about the folding, featherweight moon buggy that transformed Apollos 15, 16, and 17; the New York Times Best Seller CHESAPEAKE REQUIEM: A YEAR WITH THE WATERMEN OF VANISHING TANGIER ISLAND (HarperCollins, 2018), about a remote and storied island crabbing community threatened by rising sea levels; AUTO BIOGRAPHY: A CLASSIC CAR, AN OUTLAW MOTORHEAD, AND 57 YEARS OF THE AMERICAN DREAM (HarperCollins, 2014) a story of postwar America told through one old Chevy and the fourteen people who've owned it; THE BIG ROADS (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), an armchair history of America's highways and their effects on the country they bind; WHERE THEY LAY (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), for which I accompanied a military archaeological team into the jungles of Laos on a quest for the remains of a U.S. helicopter crew shot down thirty years before; JOURNEY ON THE JAMES (University of Virginia Press, 2001), the story of a great American river and the surprising history that has unfolded in and around it; ONE BUCK AT A TIME (with Macon Brock, 2017), an insider's account of Dollar's Tree growth from seemingly loopy idea to $20 billion retail juggernaut; and THE TANGIERMAN'S LAMENT (University of Virginia Press, 2007), a collection of long-form newspaper and magazine stories, most of them from Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot. I've also produced a steady stream of feature stories and essays for magazines, journals, web sites and newspapers around the country--among them Outside, Parade, Popular Mechanics, and the Washington Post.
