Tom Zoellner

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.

Articles

Where It Happened: Documenting the American Places We’d Like to Forget
A gorgeous photo album of America’s unvisited places of its troubled past.
Tom ZoellnerDec 18, 2017
Pulling the Fire Alarm: The “L. A. Times” Editorial Board Versus the Bully-in-Chief
The “L. A. Times” editorial board indicts the 45th president.
Tom ZoellnerJul 18, 2017
- Politics
Above and Below the Fruited Plain: On Edward McPherson’s “The History of the Future”
A trip through the contemporary American landscape featuring portraits of eight different cities by a creative writing professor.
Tom ZoellnerJun 23, 2017
- Cultural Studies
- Politics
Open the Pod Bay Doors
Tom Zoellner talks to Simon Birch about his new exhibition, "The 14th Factory."
Tom ZoellnerMay 30, 2017
- Art & Architecture
You’re The Puppet: Trump, the Death of Truth, and the Silence of the Left
Tom Zoellner and Michelle Chihara on recreating a shared vision of a progressive nation.
Michelle Chihara, Tom ZoellnerNov 25, 2016
- Politics
The Orange Industrial Complex
Orange County’s local distinctions can be traced to the time when the orange was monocultured king, and the local economy arranged around it.
Tom ZoellnerApr 18, 2016
- Nonfiction
The Golden Muse
A brief survey of gold mining literature across the Americas.
Tom ZoellnerJul 14, 2015
Where Criticism Is Counterrevolutionary: Tania Bruguera on Cuba and the Fight for Free Speech
An exclusive interview with Tania Bruguera following the Havana Biennial exhibition of art.
Tom ZoellnerJul 8, 2015
- Around the World