Americans tend to think of the Revolution as a Massachusetts-based event orchestrated by Virginians, but in fact the war took place mostly in the Middle Colonies—in New York and New Jersey and the parts of Pennsylvania that on a clear day you can almost see from the Empire State Building. In My American Revolution, Robert Sullivan delves into this first Middle America, digging for a glorious, heroic part of the past in the urban, suburban, and sometimes even rural landscape of tod...

Surprisingly funny and compulsively readable, Rats is an unlikely account of a year spent in a garbage-strewn alley in lower Manhattan. Sullivan spends the year with a notebook and night-vision goggles, hunting for fabled rat-kings, trapping a rat of his own, and trying (and failing) to conquer his own fear of rats. He meets the exterminators, garbage men and civic activists who play their part in the centuries-old war between human city-dweller and wild city rat. He travels to a ...

Published on the cusp of the new millennium, Maori poet Robert Sullivan's third book of poems, Star Waka, explores themes of journeying and navigation, moving back and forth in time and focus to confront colonisation, contemporary political issues and personal questions of family and identity. It came with some strings attached: each poem had to feature either a star, a waka (canoe) or the ocean. Within these parameters, and in 2001 lines, Sullivan creates 100 poems that, he says,...

After rejoining social media, Robert Sullivan wrote and posted a poem a day over two and a half months – the poems collected in Hopurangi— Songcatcher. Inspired by the cyclical energies of the Maramataka, these poems see the poet re-finding himself and his world – in the matauranga of his kuia from the Ngati Hau and Ngati Kaharau hapu of Ngapuhi; in his mother' s stories from his Ngati Manu hapu at Karetu; in the singing and storytelling at Puketeraki Marae, home of his father' s people of...

It's 1953. Springtime. Eisenhower's in The White House. Jo Stafford's riding high on Billboard. Audie Murphy and Jimmy Stewart are stars. The Korean War is finally grinding down. It's a good time to be an American. It's a good time to be an ex Gyrene. And it's a good time to be in the Big Apple. So Renny Mack and Buford Messner, long time army buddies out of Brooklyn, set up as private investigators, pounding the streets of Manhattan. But after two years in business things are on the skids...

One of The New Yorker's best books of the year so far | A Kirkus Reviews Best Nature Book of 2024“Singular . . . Virtuosic . . . Double Exposure is the best book I’ve read about America . . . in many, many years.” —Corey Seymour, Vogue (a best book of 2024)**“Extraordinary . . . A transformative experience for the reader.” —Lucy Sante“A large-hearted, wide-angled book . . . I couldn't put it down....

Some people are just naturally good at not getting rich. They didn't buy Microsoft when a friend mentioned that he was helping start up a new software company. They sold their apartment in Manhattan for a song in the seventies, instinctively believing the real estate market would never, ever come back. These people have built-in wealth prevention systems that steer them safely away from big money even in the most wealth-rich intersections of their lives.In this book, Robert Sullivan...

Tunui | Comet is the first collection in more than a decade by one of our most important living Maori poets. Rolling easily between korero Maori and the canonical traditions of English-language poetry, through karakia and powhiri, treaty training and decolonisation wikis, Robert Sullivan takes readers on a marvellous poetic hikoi. Guided by Maui and Tawhirimatea, Moana Jackson and Freddie Mercury, we walk from K'Rd council flats to Kaka Point, finding ourselves and our ancestors along the ...

Just five miles west of New York City, the Meadowlands is an untamed, vilified, half-developed and smelly tract of swampland. It is home to rare birds and missing bodies, tranquil marshes and a major sports arena, burning garbage dumps and corporate headquarters, the remains of the original Penn Station and possibly those of more than one mafioso. Acclaimed writer Robert Sullivan proves himself to be the perfect explorer, historian and archaeologist for this fragile yet amazingly resilient...

Children the world over have believed in the legend of Santa Claus forever—until told differently. Now, there is no reason to think otherwise! Robert Sullivan, a senior editor at Life magazine, has diligently compiled documentation to prove that Santa and flying reindeer are anything but myths and that Santa Claus does, in fact, make his trek around the globe each Christmas Eve. With the expertise of some of the world's most renowned Arctic experts, wildlife biologists, historians...

Originally commissioned as the libretto for a work by composer John Psathas for the 50th birthday celebration of the Orpheus Choir, this book-length poem offers fresh perspectives on the familiar story of Cook's Pacific explorations. Employing a broad bicultural approach to reinterpret the Orpheus myth for the South Pacific, Sullivan uses a wide range of styles—from 18th-century dialogue to 21st-century hip hop cadences—to create a revisionist Cook who must accept responsibility for the da...

Love and the rearticulation of New Zealand mythology from a Polynesian perspective are the central themes of this new collection of Hawaii-based Maori poetry. The poems open up two cultural traditions—a Polynesian oral tradition and a written European tradition—with subjects that range from ancient myths to the complexity and moral ambiguity of the modern world. Poetry lovers will find pleasure in the poems' conceptual energy, constantly yielding surprises and unexpected and imaginative an...