author
Charles Nordhoff
1830–1901
A sailor, journalist, and sharp-eyed travel writer, he turned years at sea and on the American frontier into lively nonfiction that brought distant places close to readers. His books mix firsthand adventure with a reporter’s curiosity about how people lived and worked.
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 and brought to the United States as a child, Charles Nordhoff grew up in Cincinnati and entered working life early as a printer’s apprentice. He later served in the U.S. Navy and spent time on whaling and fishing voyages, experiences that gave him rich material for his early sea books.
Nordhoff became known as a journalist and descriptive writer whose work ranged from maritime adventure to travel, politics, and social observation. He wrote books such as Nine Years a Sailor and Stories of the Island World, and he was also widely read for his accounts of California and the American West, where he had a gift for making places feel immediate and real.
Over time, he built a reputation as a versatile man of letters who could report, explain, and entertain at once. He died in San Francisco in 1901, leaving behind work that still interests readers for its firsthand energy and its vivid picture of nineteenth-century life.