Carl Hoffman

Carl Hoffman (born May 4, 1960) is an American journalist and author whose work has most recently focused on western fascination with indigenous cultures, especially in New Guinea and Borneo.

Hoffman is a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler magazine, a former contributing editor at Wired and has published articles in Outside, National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure and many others.

Biography

Carl Hoffman is the author of the critically acclaimed books “SAVAGE HARVEST: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art,” “THE LUNATIC EXPRESS: Discovering the World Via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains and Planes” and HUNTING WARBIRDS: The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Airplanes of World War II.

Savage Harvest was a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times “editor’s pick.” Amazon.com named it the best non-fiction book of 2014, the Washington Post one of its 50 “notable” non-fiction books of the year, it was a Kirkus Best Books of 2014 and it was shortlisted for an Edgar Award. To untangle what happened to the son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who vanished in 1961, Hoffman learned to speak Bahasa Indonesia and lived in a remote village amid 10,000 square miles of road-less swamp with the Asmat, a tribe of former headhunters and cannibals on the southwest coast of New Guinea. Savage Harvest has been translated into eight languages, including Vietnamese and Chinese.

The Lunatic Express was named one of the ten best books of 2010 by the Wall Street Journal and was a New York Times summer reading pick. To report Lunatic, he traveled 50,000 miles around the world on its most dangerous conveyances, including by bus across Afghanistan and through the Gobi desert on a 20-ton propane truck.

He is currently working on his fourth book, under contract to William Morrow, a division of HarperCollins.

A contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler and a former contributing editor for Wired, Hoffman has traveled to Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, New Guinea, Greenland, Mongolia, Russia, China, Indonesia and more than 65 other countries on assignment for Outside, Smithsonian, National Geographic Adventure, ESPN the Magazine, Wired, Men's Journal and many other publications.

He has spoken widely about his work and the risks and rewards of traveling deeply into the furthest corners of the world through a variety of venues and mediums including Ciudad de las Ideas in Puebla, Mexico; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Columbus Museum of Art; the National Geographic Society; The Explorer’s Club in New York and Washington, D.C.; eg Conference, Monterey, California; Ubud Writer’s and Reader’s Festival, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; Adelaide Writer’s Week, Adelaide, Australia; The Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia; CBS Sunday Morning television news show and all of the major NPR shows, including Diane Rehm, Fresh Air and Weekend Edition.

Hoffman has won five Lowell Thomas Awards from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation and three North American Travel Journalism Awards. He is a second generation native of Washington, D.C., a graduate of the District of Columbia public schools and the father of three.