TONY HISS

In Motion marks Tony Hiss's thirteenth book and follows the award-winning The Experience of Place. His books have explored subjects as varied as train travel, Hunanese cooking, giant pandas, photography, the story of his family, the landscape of the Chicago region, and both the landscape and the future of New York City and its region. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than 30 years, contributing essays, profiles, reviews, editorials, and more than 400 "Talk of the Town" stories, and has also written for The New York Times, Newsweek, and Travel & Leisure. He has lectured around the world, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. The National Recreation and Park Association's National Literary Award praised Hiss for a lifetime of "spellbinding and poignant" writing about "how our environments, modes of travel, and other aspects of the American landscape affect our lives." He lives in New York with his wife, writer Lois Metzger, and their son.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

H2O: Highlands to Ocean
A First Close Look at the Outstanding Landscapes and Waterscapes
of the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Region
The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, 2004 (with Christopher Meier)

“I was immediately impressed by its fusion of history, science, and sheer poetry….  I invite you to savor this report.  For it is at once a guide to the natural history and splendors of this unique region … a wonderfully thoughtful essay … and a handbook for all of us who would be ‘Region-Builders.’” –Michael Catania, President, Conservation Resources, Inc.

Download free copy of book:  [PDF file - 240pp, 1.6mb]

Download full-color NY watershed map: [JPG format - 850kb]

Tony Hiss at large in the H2O area:  "The Accidental Oasis" (New York Times (August 21, 2005)

The Experience of Place
A New Way of Looking at and Dealing With our Radically Changing
Cities and Countryside
Vintage Books, 1991

“Hiss’s book … is like a splendid place-experience.  It draws one in, surprises and charms, and enhances the landscapes of the mind.” –Jane Jacobs

“An unusual and fascinating book….  This is a man showing us where he lives and presenting his quite unconcealed feelings, so many of them unexpected and provocative, most of them just plain inspirational.  The Experience of Place is the imaginative road to where any of us happens to belong.” –Ronald Blythe, The New York Times Book Review

“To read [The Experience of Place] is to come away convinced not only that things can be put right, but that the job is well underway.” –Malcolm Jones, Jr., Newsweek

“The Experience of Place is a tour de force….  A book so full of thought it leaves one silent at the end.  Silent … and full of zeal for public action.” –Michael Valpy, Toronto Globe and Mail

[Buy book on Amazon.com]

All Aboard with E. M. Frimbo
The World’s Greatest Railroad Buff
Expanded edition, Kodansha, 1997 (with Rogers E. M. Whitaker)

“This is a book you wish would never end, and you close it with a sigh for time marvelously well spent.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Frimbo rails – so to speak – against what he calls ‘infernal combustion.’  What, he asks, is a car?  ‘A car is a rolling sneeze, a slice of selfishness.’  A tingling compendium of great train rides….  A Super-Chief of a book.” –Michael Demarest, Time

“Frimbo’s flair for civilized living promises eventual triumph over bureaucrats, soulless railroad executives, and the forces of evil that have translated the two-car garage into the American Dream.” –Los Angeles Times

[Buy book on Amazon.com]

SELECTED ESSAYS

• "Deep Travel" (Sunset, May 2010) 
  —along the Cactus Forest Drive, in Tucson
  
• "Don't Fence Me In (Too Much)" (New York Times, May 15, 2005) 
  —the redesign of New York's Washington Square Park
  
• "The Death and Life of Preservation" (New York Times, October 26, 2003) 
  —remembering New York's Penn Station
  
• "The Return of Train Travel" (Travel and Leisure, April 2002) 
  —innovation and resurgence on America's train lines
• "The Other Reasons" (Land and People, Spring 2002) 
  —healing the world's "places of hurt"
  
• "Get Outta the Way -- We're Dancing Here!" (New York Times, January 31, 1998) 
  —the joys of walking in New York
  
• "Rails to Trails" (Atlantic Monthly, December 1997)
  —a modern American movement comes of age
  

CONTACT TONY HISS