In 1989, Laurence Gonzales had just published his first book of nonfiction, a collection of essays called The Still Point, with the University of Arkansas Press. Imagine his surprise one day to receive a letter from none other than Kurt Vonnegut. "The excellence of your writing and the depth of your reporting saddened me, in a way," Vonnegut wrote, "reminding me yet again what a tiny voice facts and reason have in this era of wrap-around, mega-decibel rock-and-roll." Several books, many articles, and a growing list of awards later. Gonzales-known for taking his readers to earthralling extremes-is still writing with singular excellence and depth. In his latest collection, The Chemistry of Fire, we go from the top of Mount Washington, known for "the worst weather in the world," to twelve thousand feet beneath the ocean, where a Naval Intelligence officer used secret military equipment to discover the wreck of the Titanic seventy-three years after its sinking. We experience night assaults with the Eighty-Second Airborne Division, the dynamiting of the hundred-foot snowpack on Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, a trip to the International Space Station, the crash of an airliner in the Everglades, and more. The University of Arkansas Press is proud to bring Gonzales's stories to a contemporary audience, stories that, like all of Gonzales's work, "fairly sing with a voice all their own" (Chicago Sun-Times).
In 1989, Laurence Gonzales had just published his first book of nonfiction, a collection of essays called The Still Point, with the University of Arkansas Press. Imagine his surprise one day to receive a letter from none other than Kurt Vonnegut. "The excellence of your writing and the depth of your reporting saddened me, in a way," Vonnegut wrote, "reminding me yet again what a tiny voice facts and reason have in this era of wrap-around, mega-decibel rock-and-roll." Several books, many articles, and a growing list of awards later. Gonzales-known for taking his readers to earthralling extremes-is still writing with singular excellence and depth. In his latest collection, The Chemistry of Fire, we go from the top of Mount Washington, known for "the worst weather in the world," to twelve thousand feet beneath the ocean, where a Naval Intelligence officer used secret military equipment to discover the wreck of the Titanic seventy-three years after its sinking. We experience night assaults with the Eighty-Second Airborne Division, the dynamiting of the hundred-foot snowpack on Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, a trip to the International Space Station, the crash of an airliner in the Everglades, and more. The University of Arkansas Press is proud to bring Gonzales's stories to a contemporary audience, stories that, like all of Gonzales's work, "fairly sing with a voice all their own" (Chicago Sun-Times).
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