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THE BOOKS

 

These are the books I've written, not including An Illustrated Viking Voyage. None of them are still in print but can still be bought at local used book stores, as well as online at Amazon and other sites.

Off the Deep End

ISBN-13-978-1-56512-564-3

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The proper title for this book is actually: "How I Almost Died Foolishly Thinking I Could Best My 21-Year-Old Self." Broken down from roughly four years of training my 45-year-old body to swim as fast as it had in college, I contracted MRSA while coaching swimming at YMCA Nationals in Florida and then, as if that weren't enough, while doctors were removing the flesh-eating bacteria attacking my nether regions, my kidneys went offline for nearly two weeks. None of this made it into the book and a few weeks later I was out on my book tour following orders from a publicist to pretend I was still in training. 

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There are both entertaining and educational parts to this book that make it a decent read but, in the end--spolier alert--I didn't make it to the Olympic Trials.

Flushed

ISBN-13-978-0-7434-7408-5

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In many ways, this has been my most successful book. It's been quoted all over the place. A woman made a YouTube series partly inspired by it. And I've been the expert Talking Head on two different History channel specials. I'm not saying it sold a lot but its quirky approach to what is a very serious subject has had unexpected staying power. It's like an old man's pecker on Viagra--poking up in unexpected places. 

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Stolen Water

ISBN-13-978-0-7434-7407-8

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Two interesting factoids: I was 100% convinced that my amusing and outraged prose was going to propel this increasingly angry diatribe to the top of the NYTimes best-seller list AND, even more foolishly, that people would read it and demand we finally do something smart about this unparalleled ecosystem.  Like move it out of Florida. Or disband the Florida Legislature so it could not make yet one more crooked piece of legislation to sell out the world's slowest moving river. I fell in love with Florida while researching and writing this book--the Florida most of us never see--and truly wish there were some way we could actually save Marjory Stoneman Douglas's beloved river. I'm most proud of this book and believe Audubon magazine got it right when it said I am "a passionate grumbler. Stolen Water is his love song to the Everglades..."

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Please read this book--buy it, borrow a copy from some environmental group or steal it from some corrupt Florida politician... Oh, you might want to skip some of the middle section when I go on and on about the cumbersome bureaucracy that makes fixing the Everglades problem nigh on impossible.

A Viking Voyage

ISBN-978-0-345-42004-6

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This is the story of a ridiculous, ill-advised adventure I went on with a gang of bumblling voyagers. I would happily do it all over again and again and again--although one of the times around I hope I wouldn't scavenge the whale-head meat that made us all so sick. There was, after all, a reason the Inuit left it behind.

Westward Whoa

ISBN-0-671-79891-X

 

This is my first book and will, therefore, always hold a special place because not only did my wife Lisa, whom I had just met weeks before heading out, help me prepare and pack for it, but I had the best traveling companion imaginable in Preston Maybank. My goal was to show, without any filters, what two guys are really like when out in the woods and it's a fairly raucous, fart-heavy result. My finest, most honest work.

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