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Tom Miller (travel writer)
Encyclopedia
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
. His ten books include The Panama Hat Trail, On the Border, Trading With the Enemy, and Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink. He has written articles for the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, The Smithsonian
Smithsonian (magazine)
Smithsonian is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The first issue was published in 1970.-History:...
, Natural History
Natural History (magazine)
Natural History is an American natural history magazine. The stated mission of the magazine is to promote public understanding and appreciation of nature and science.- History :...
, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
, and many other magazines.
A Washington, D.C. native, Tom Miller's childhood was full of reading. The family read three newspapers daily, and the bookshelves of his home were always full. His earliest travels would be to Camp Catawba
Camp Catawba
Camp Catawba was a summer camp for boys near the town of Blowing Rock in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It was established in 1944 by Vera Lachmann , a poet, classicist and educator who emigrated from Germany in 1939. In 1947 she was joined by the composer Tui St. George Tucker , who...
, a summer boys' camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Blue Ridge Mountains
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. This province consists of northern and southern physiographic regions, which divide near the Roanoke River gap. The mountain range is located in the eastern United States, starting at its southern-most...
of North Carolina. He wrote for his high school newspaper, and by his fifth and final semester of college, was editor-in-chief of the school's weekly paper. But this was the late 1960s, and the underground, anti-war press
Underground press
The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....
had for him a cultural and political appeal the college presses lacked. He would continue through the early 1970s editing and authoring underground pamphlets, papers, and flyers.
By 1969 he had moved to Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
. He tried working odd jobs—selling encyclopedias door-to-door and working as a janitor, both jobs lasting four weeks—but focused on living cheaply and writing for whatever money he could earn. His first break would come after authoring a short piece for SunDance magazine that an editor at Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
happened to read. He had been paid all of $15 to write the article; the editor suggested his magazine would have paid $750 for the same work. Soon he would find his first mainstream work with them.
In a similar fashion, an offbeat 1975 article he wrote about the Kennedy Assassination was read by a literary agent who insisted it could be expanded into a full length book. This would become The Assassination Please Almanac, his first book, whose cover blurb called it "a consumer's guide to conspiracy theories."
Life on the southern U.S. border inspired his first travel book: On the Border: Portraits of America's Southwestern Frontier. He travelled the full 2,000 mile length of the United States–Mexico border
United States–Mexico border
The United States–Mexico border is the international border between the United States and Mexico. It runs from Imperial Beach, California, and Tijuana, Baja California, in the west to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, in the east, and traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from major...
researching it and interviewing its denizens. The book was published in 1981.
His travelogueThe Panama Hat Trail (1986) follows the production of a (misnomered) Panama hat
Panama hat
A Panama hat is a traditional brimmed hat of Ecuadorian origin that is made from the plaited leaves of the toquilla straw plant...
from the straw fields of Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, its weaving by Indian peasants, to its finishing in a North American hat factory, and finally the sale to a San Diego retail store.
His book Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink: Offbeat Portraits of America’s Southwest, won the 2000 Lowell Thomas
Lowell Thomas
Lowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, broadcaster, and traveler, best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous...
Award for "Best Travel Book of the Year," given by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.
In 1987 he first visited Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, and in 1992 his experiences became the book Trading With the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba. He would also write many articles about Cuba.
He conceived and edited the book How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life, published simultaneously in Spanish in 2007.
He has also edited anthologies about Cuba and the Mexican border and was a major contributor to the 4-volume Encyclopedia Latina. His collection of over 80 versions of La Bamba
La Bamba (song)
"La Bamba" is a Mexican folk song, originally from the state of Veracruz, best known from a 1958 adaptation by Ritchie Valens, a top 40 hit in the U.S. charts and one of early rock and roll's best-known songs...
led to his Rhino Records compilation The Best of La Bamba.
The University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
Library acquired Miller's archives and mounted a major exhibit of his papers. He has served as adjunct research associate at the University of Arizona’s Latin American Area Center since 1990, and resides in Tucson with his wife, Regla Albarrán. In 2008 the City of Quito
Quito
San Francisco de Quito, most often called Quito , is the capital city of Ecuador in northwestern South America. It is located in north-central Ecuador in the Guayllabamba river basin, on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes mountains...
, at a public ceremony in its Centro Historico, proclaimed Miller “Un Huésped Ilustre” (An Illustrious Guest) for his literary contributions to Ecuador. One of Miller's siblings is Charles A. Miller
Charles A. Miller
Charles A. Miller is an author and Professor Emeritus of Politics and American Studies at Lake Forest College.Miller received his B.A...
(1937), Professor Emeritus of Politics and American Studies, Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College, founded in 1857, is a private liberal arts college in Lake Forest, Illinois. The college has 1,500 students representing 47 states and 78 countries....
.
Quotes on Writing
"Great travel writing consists of equal parts curiosity, vulnerability and vocabulary. It is not a terrain for know-it-alls or the indecisive. The best of the genre can simply be an elegant natural history essay, a nicely writ sports piece, or a well-turned profile of a bar band and its music. A well-grounded sense of place is the challenge for the writer. We observe, we calculate, we inquire, we look for a link between what we already know and what we're about to learn. The finest travel writing describes what's going on when nobody's looking.""No camera, no recording device, no laptop, none of this palm pilot nonsense or a cell phone. Paper and pencil, a book, maybe a bilingual dictionary. Anything beyond that (a) can be stolen, and (b) intimidates people you encounter. The more double-A batteries you carry, the more you distance yourself from the people you're writing about."