Since 2012, I’ve been reviewing books for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review, and NPR Books, among others. Books are pillars of civilization, and I love participating in the conversations surrounding them. I’m a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Here’s the list of books I’ve reviewed:
“After the Fall,” for the Wall STreet Journal on January 30, 2023, about Michale Wejchert’s Hidden Mountains: Survival and Reckoning After a Climb Gone Wrong.
“Paradise Lost,” for the Wall Street Journal on May 12, 2020, about Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano’s Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy.
“Himalayan Heroes,” for the Wall Street Journal on March 13, 2020, about Scott Ellsworth’s The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas.
“No Strings Attached,” for the Wall Street Journal on April 26, 2019, about Mark Synnott’s The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life.
“The Making of a Killer,” for the Wall Street Journal on February 5, 2019, about Dane Huckelbridge’s No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History.
“Blood on the Tracks,” for the Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2019, about Jack Kelly’s The Edge of Anarchy: the Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America.
“Entrepreneurs For The Union,” for the Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2018, about Jeffrey D. Wert’s Civil War Barons: The Tycoons, Entrepreneurs, Inventors, and Visionaries Who Forged Victory and Shaped a Nation.
“Tigers Over a Rising Sun,” for the Wall Street Journal, July 21-22, 2018, about Eugenie Buchan’s A Few Planes for China and Sam Kleiner’s The Flying Tigers.
“What’s Written in the Wind,” for the Wall Street Journal, December 16-17, 2017, about Tristan Gooley’s How to Read Nature: Awaken Your Senses to the World You’ve Never Noticed.
“Things You Don’t Tell Your Mudder,” for the Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2017, about Will Dean and Tim Adams’s It Takes a Tribe: Building the Tough Mudder Movement.
“Discomania,” for the Wall Street Journal, June 3-4, 2017, about David Gessner’s Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth.
“Beholding Hell Before Age 20,” for the Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2017, about John Freely’s The House of Memory.
“Scaling the Walls of Yosemite,” for the Wall Street Journal, September 3 & 4, 2016, about Glen Denny’s Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing & Living in Yosemite.
“Climb Every Mountain,” for the New York Times Book Review, May 1, 2016, about Maurice Isserman’s Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering.
“Education as a pathway to pacifying a violent nation,” for the Washington Post, February 14, 2016, about Jeffrey E. Stern’s The Last Thousand: One School’s Promise in a Nation at War.
“The Savage Mountain,” for the Wall Street Journal, February 6 & 7, 2016, about Mick Conefrey’s The Ghosts of K2.
“Free Spirit,” for the Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2015, about Alex Honnold’s Alone on the Wall.
“Go Your Own Way,” for the Wall Street Journal, August 1-2, 2015, about Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail.
“America’s Way of War,” for the Washington Post, June 5, 2015, about Kenneth C. Davis’s The Hidden History of America at War.
“Slippery Slopes,” for the Wall Street Journal, April 4 & 5, 2015, about Daniel Arnold’s Snowblind.
“Bluffs in the Buff” for the Wall Street Journal, November 15 & 16, 2014, about Stephen C. Sieberson’s The Naked Mountaineer.
“Can Ovid and Harry Potter Guide Us Through This Era?” for the Washington Post, November 7, 2014, about Elizabeth Samet’s No Man’s Land.
“Wintry Climbs,” for the Wall Street Journal, October 11 & 12, 2014, about Barry Blanchard’s The Calling.
“Ecstasy Therapy” for the Washington Post, September 11, 2014, about Tom Shroder’s Acid Test.
“Only One Way Down,” for the Wall Street Journal, July 26 & 27, 2014, about Matt Higgins’s Bird Dream.
“And Five Came Back,” for the Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2014, about Andy Hall’s Denali’s Howl.
“Siberian Death Trip,” for the Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2014, about Donnie Eichar’s Dead Mountain.
“Lost and Found,” for the Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2013, about Wil S. Hylton’s Vanished.
“An Easy Day for a Lady,” for the Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2013, about Ed Viesturs and David Roberts’s The Mountain.
“Pioneers of the Sky: 3 Books That Take Flight,” for NPR’s “Three Books” series on “All Things Considered,” March 16, 2012, about Antoine de Saint Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s North to the Orient, and Ernest K. Gann’s Fate is the Hunter.
My review of Paul Bogards’s The End of Night.
My review of Annie Jacobsen’s Operation Paperclip.
My review of Peter Stark’s Astoria.
My review of Steph Davis’s Learning to Fly.
My review of Mitchell Zuckoff’s Frozen in Time.
My review of Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully’s Shattered Sword.
This isn’t a book, but here’s my review of Loteria Film’s documentary “Monumental: David Brower’s Fight for Wild America” in Mother Jones, October 2004.
And to make my bones, here are my three:
The Bonanza King by Gregory Crouch, reviewed by Peter Cooke in “The Man Who Hit the Mother Lode,” in the Wall Street Journal, July, 7-8, 2018.
China’s Wings by Gregory Crouch, reviewed by the late Michael J. Ybarra in “Help Came Over the Himalayas,” in the Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2012.
Enduring Patagonia by Gregory Crouch
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