Dan's Cave in the Bahamas. Image by Wes Skiles, courtesy of National Geographic.
Andrew has contributed articles and essays to National Geographic, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Smithsonian and Men’s Journal, among other national publications. His subjects range widely, from a frozen gully in the Scottish highlands to an inner city animal shelter and the pastry kitchen of a Michelin 3-Star Parisian restaurant.
His book A Meal Observed won the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2005, and was excerpted in the Best Food Writing 2004. He is also the author of Dangerous Games and the San Francisco Chronicle best seller Fall of the Phantom Lord, which examined the appeal of risk sports and chronicled the exploits of world-class rock climber Dan Osman.
Andrew’s cover story on cave diving in the August 2010 National Geographic may be found here: Cave Diving in the Bahamas. His cover story on the apostles in the March 2012 issue of National Geographic may be seen here: In the Footsteps of the Apostles.
Two of his stories for The Atlantic have received notable mention in the Best American Sports Writing, and his work has been anthologized in numerous volumes, including Down Time: Great Writers on Diving and The Best of Rock & Ice. His work has been translated into Italian, Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
Todhunter paddling off the coast of Jura. Image by Gareth Brown, courtesy of National Geographic Adventure.
REVIEWS
A Meal Observed, Knopf, 2004
“Delectable… a tribute to Todhunter's prowess as a writer… has the flavor and urbanity of A.J. Liebling and John McPhee.”
—New York Daily News
“Enchanting... When the final glasses of cognac arrive with the bill at 12:06 a.m., you’ll feel as sated as Todhunter did on that cool summer night.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Todhunter plays it superlatively… He is appealingly unsnobbish [and] eloquent.”
—The New Yorker
Dangerous Games, Doubleday, 2000
“Top-drawer extreme sports writing from Todhunter, unadorned and vital and appealingly decorous.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A stunning collection. Though these stories are from real life, they read like short fiction, vignettes of incredible characters and their even more incredible pastimes… a real gem of adventure work.”
—Booklist
“Front and center in this philosophical and exhilarating collection is the humanity motivating every incredible action.”
—The New York Times
Fall of the Phantom Lord, Anchor Books, 1998
“Classic, participant-observer journalism, informed and heady, that brightly illuminates the strange, enthralling world of extreme sports.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"Andrew Todhunter produces some of the freshest and most original writing about climbing in recent memory.”
—David Roberts
“Todhunter has the writing style of a good climber on steep rock—calm, precise, and apparently effortless.”
—Sebastian Junger