One hundred and eight five years after Melville shipped out of New Bedford, Ma., then the largest whaling port in the world, the city remains the highest grossing fishing port in the USA. Spending the next year reporting on it; heading out for ten days on the Debra C in pursuit of wild fish.

In 2020 I changed things up - spending the 2020 presidential campaign living & traveling w the most obsessive MAGA Trumpians for Liar's Circus. Deep dive into WHY the obsession.  Emotionally exhausting. Was sixth in line after 54 hours in the parking lot in Tupelo, Mississippi.

2018's The Last Wild Men of Borneo is about Swiss rainforest activist Bruno Manser & American tribal art dealer Michael Palmieri, & the long Western pursuit of the spiritual treasures of remote indigenous people. I think of it as a thematic sequel to Savage.

Probably the most sublime & transcendent experience of my life. Book is less about Rockefeller than the Asmat, a complex people under assault from the West. This is from house where I lived:

This should be paired with Scott Wallace’s excellent new book Central America in the Crosshairs of War, his account in words and pics of seven years reporting from the front lines of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.