A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Library Journal Top Ten Best Books of 2011 A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Bestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale." Tony Horwitz's riveting book travels antebellum America to deliver both a taut historical drama and a telling portrait of a nation divided—a time that still resonates in ours.

"The author retraces Frederick Law Olmsted's journey across the American South in the 1850s, on the eve of the Civil War. Olmsted roamed eleven states and six thousand miles, and the New York Times published his dispatches about slavery and its defenders. More than 150 years later, Tony Horwitz followed Olmsted's route, and whenever possible his mode of transport--rail, riverboats, in the saddle--through Appalachia, down the Ohio and Mississippi, through Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and across Texas to the Rio Grande, discovering and reporting on vestiges of what Olmsted called the Cotton Kingdom"--

Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance. He joins "hardcore" reenactors; witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war; finds that Andersonville Prison's commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of an eccentric pilgrim. Written with Horwitz's signature blend of humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, this book brings alive old battlefields and new ones--classrooms, courts, country bars--where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways.--From publisher description

'One of the most captivating books on Captain Cook I have yet read Horwitz's eye for detail and ear for dialogue are Brysonesque indeed the master had better look to his own laurels.' Tim Bowden, Good Reading 'There is an irresistible momentum to Horwitz's epic journey You will seldom encounter travel writing better than this, and it is no surprise that Into the Blue has rocketed up the best-seller lists.' The Sydney Morning Herald'What a ripping yarn is Into the Blue, all rum, sodomy and the lash. It's also a complex and comprehensive salute to a man who rose from humble origins to become leader of men Compelling, and still a relevant tale, Horwitz has done the good (and bad) captain proud.' The New Zealand HeraldCaptain James Cook's three epic journeys in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. Tony Horwitz vividly recounts Cook's voyages and the exotic scenes he encountered: tropical orgies, taboo rituals, human sacrifice, hip-throbbing Tahitian dancers, New Zealand cannibals, Hawaiian surfers, and Australian Aborigines sealed off from the rest of the world for thousands of years. He also explores Cook the man: an impoverished farmboy who broke through the barriers of his class and time to become the greatest navigator in history.Tony Horwitz follows in Cook's footsteps to uncover his legacy, and along the way has many revealing and often amusing adventures of his own. By turns harrowing and hilarious, insightful and entertaining, Into the Blue brings to life a man whose voyages have left an indelible mark on the world as we know it.

Stripped naked and pursued across cactus-studded plains by a band of armed Blackfoot Indians, John Colter escaped certain death to become the one of the most durable characters in western American history. But Colter's harrowing tale was not beyond the ordinary when compared to the adventures of other American explorers. In The Devil May Care, popular historian and travel writer Tony Horwitz has culled through the American National Biography and selected fifty stirring biographies of adventurers who had no one's footsteps to follow in--and yet contributed enormously to our understanding of the world. Horwitz introduces us to fascinating individuals such as John Ledyard, the first American to see what would become the Pacific Northwest, and Elisha Kent Kane, America's first arctic hero, who stumbled upon an extremely strange remedy for scurvy while icebound off of Ellesmere Island. Having set off into the unknown many times himself as a foreign correspondent, Horwitz brings a subtle sense of humor and a reporter's eye for detail to a collection that offers a glimpse inside the lives of historic Americans who brazenly challenged danger as they pursued their wanderlust to extreme climates and forbidding environments. Beginning with a short essay, Horwitz seeks his own definition of exploration, drawing on some of his research into the voyages of Captain James Cook and considering its larger implications throughout history. Archival photographs as well as a lively and personal introduction to each story by Horwitz further enhance the appeal of a volume that winds its way through several centuries of American exploration, affirming that the best adventure stories are the true ones.