Robert Kurson is a master of gripping history narratives both on the page and at the podium. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Shadow Divers, the amazing true story of two deep-sea divers who risked their lives, over a period of years, to discover a lost WWII German U-Boat off the coast of New Jersey. His upcoming book Pirate Hunters is an edge-of-your-seat chronicle about the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister and two adventurous American men determined to find his ship, the Golden Fleece – one of only two confirmed pirate ships in the world to be found
Lectures
Kurson’s riveting lectures, often accompanied by photos, video, and actual pirate treasures, are fast-paced, suspenseful, and entertaining. As Daniel James Brown (#1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat) puts it, “Kurson brings us face to face with some of the most swashbuckling pirates ever to sail the Caribbean, even as he takes us underwater on a high-tech quest to discover the relics they left behind.”
About Robert Kurson
Robert Kurson grew up in the Chicago suburbs. As a child, he attended several school field trips to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, home to both a living coal mine and U-505, a German World War II U-boat captured on the high seas. While his classmates opted to visit the coal mine (kids got to sit in moving cars and hear explosions), he chose the U-boat, even if it meant he was the only kid in the cigar-shaped vessel. In that sense, his maritime-adventure books have been in the making for decades.
Kurson earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, then a law degree from Harvard Law School. His award-winning stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and Esquire, where he is a contributing editor. He is the author of Shadow Divers, the 2005 American Booksellers Association’s nonfiction Book Sense Book of the Year, and Crashing Through: The Extraordinary True Story of the Man Who Dared to See, based on Kurson’s 2006 National Magazine Award-winning profile in Esquire.
Contact us about booking Robert Kurson to speak at your next event.