author
Charles Nordhoff
1830–1901
A sailor, journalist, and vivid travel writer, he turned firsthand adventures at sea and across the American West into books that brought distant places close for readers. His work moved easily between memoir, reportage, and social observation.
3 Audiobooks
Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands
by Charles Nordhoff
The pearl lagoon
by Charles Nordhoff
About the author
Born in Prussia in 1830, he came to the United States as a child and grew up in Cincinnati. As a teenager he went to sea, serving in the U.S. Navy and later on whaling and fishing voyages. Those years gave him the material for some of his best-known early books, including Nine Years a Sailor and Stories of the Island World.
He later became a journalist and magazine editor, writing lively accounts of travel, settlement, and public life in America. His books on California, the West, and American communities were widely read, and he was especially known for clear, descriptive writing grounded in what he had seen for himself.
In his later career he also worked as a political correspondent and wrote about national issues as well as everyday life in the United States. He died in San Francisco in 1901, remembered as a writer who combined the curiosity of a reporter with the storytelling instincts of an adventurer.