Tom Zoellner is an editor at large at LARB and a professor of English at Chapman University. He is the author of eight nonfiction books, including The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire (2006), Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World (2009), The National Road: Dispatches From a Changing America (2020), Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona (2023), and Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the Bancroft Prize in history.
Tom Zoellner
Articles
Hazy Passages
Tom Zoellner speaks with Sameer Pandya, author of “Our Beautiful Boys,” about football, India, teenage hazing, and the tyranny of success.
Yelling “Fire” on a Crowded Knoll
Tom Zoellner considers a new history of the Kent State shootings by Brian VanDeMark.
What Would Becky Buy?
Tom Zoellner considers Leah Payne’s “God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music.”
32 Strips of Paper
Tom Zoellner considers Tim Z. Hernandez’s “They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir,” about the book that helped solve mysteries associated with a 1948 plane crash.
Is Trump “America’s Hitler”?
Donald Trump is sometimes compared to Adolf Hitler in his narcissism and authoritarianism. Tom Zoellner looks at German history for parallels and contradictions.
American Mythology
Is the United States a prisoner of its own mythology? Tom Zoellner looks at “A Great Disorder” by Richard Slotkin.
How Democrats Can Win Back Rural America
Tom Zoellner searches for solutions to the Democratic Party’s “rural problem.”
Cupcakes and Crotch Kicks: On Alex Belth’s “What Makes Sammy Jr. Run?”
Tom Zoellner considers the eternal game of cat and mouse between celebrities and journalists in Alex Belth’s “What Makes Sammy Jr. Run? Classic Celebrity Journalism Volume 1 (1960s and 1970s).”
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