Tom Zoellner
Tom Zoellner is a fifth-generation Arizonan, former staff writer for the Arizona Republic, and the author of eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award and Rim to River.
Visit website | 
Awards: National Book Critics Circle Award
Communities: Arizona Author, Tucsonan
Books:
Rim to River
Looking into the Heart of Arizona
Nature / Environment
University of Arizona Press
February 2024
ISBN 9780816553280
376 pages
The National Road
Dispatches from a Changing America
Current Issues / Politics / Social Science
Counterpoint Press
October 2020
ISBN 9781640092907
cl, 272 pages
$26.00, INSTORE
Buy nowA sneakily ambitious book whose 13 'dispatches' present a sweeping view of the American land and its inhabitants―how each has shaped, and deformed, the other .
. . Zoellner is a beautiful writer, a superb reporter and a deep thinker.-Jody Rosen, The New York Times Book Review
Tom Zoellner, the author of eight previous nonfiction books, draws on his extensive travels across the U.S. over the past 30 years in these eloquent essays that examine the relationship between the American landscape and the national character. He sketches the history of American migrations, including the Mormon Church's push westward and the relocation of millions of African Americans from the South to other parts of the country, and notes declining mobility rates over the past half-century.("A country on the move seems to be more reluctant than ever to pick up and go, even when prospects are grim.")
Zoellner's investigation into how people are shaped by the places where they live and work includes visits to the set of a pornographic filmmaker in the San Fernando Valley and the birthplace of Mormon leader Joseph Smith in Vermont, and reminiscences of his work at newspapers in Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In the final essay, he details the painful experience of watching workers demolish his deceased grandmother's "hand-built ranch house" in Arizona to make room for a new family's "rambling faux-Florentine palace."
"Eloquent essays... he laces this incisive account with perceptive character sketches and astute observations. The result is a poignant reminder that in America, 'constant change is our blotchy and beautiful inheritance.'
- Publishers Weekly More/less
