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I’m fascinated by the constraints and discipline required by narrative nonfiction—the task of telling a story as compelling as a novel, drawing only on the documented facts. I love looking at how various authors tackle this challenge. I’m always drawing insights and strategies for myself.
I’m a wildly enthusiastic reader myself. When we talk, we’ll first connect on that level. I feel like my own books “belong” to their subject matter (the people I’m writing about) more than they belong to me—I’m just along for the adventure. It’s insanely gratifying to share that adventure with others.
I take my subjects seriously; myself, less so. Be prepared for groanworthy puns and dad-joke level irreverence. Let’s make it informative AND fun.
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In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?
Both fell far short of their goal, but in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, the future of the Earth, and humanity itself. Linnaeus gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens, but he also denied that species change and he promulgated racist pseudoscience. Buffon formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, warned of global climate change, and argued passionately against prejudice. The clash of their conflicting worldviews continued well after their deaths, as their successors contended for dominance in the emerging science that came to be called biology.
“Enlightening…an enthralling look at a pivotal period in the history of biology.”
— Publishers’ Weekly
He was known simply as the Blind Traveler—a solitary, sightless adventurer who, astonishingly, fought the slave trade in Africa, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon, and helped chart the Australian outback. James Holman (1786–1857) became "one of the greatest wonders of the world he so sagaciously explored," triumphing not only over blindness but crippling pain, poverty, and the interference of well-meaning authorities (his greatest feat, a circumnavigation of the globe, had to be launched in secret). Once a celebrity, a bestselling author, and an inspiration to Charles Darwin and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the charismatic, witty Holman outlived his fame, dying in an obscurity that has endured—until now.
Drawing on meticulous research, Jason Roberts ushers us into the Blind Traveler's uniquely vivid sensory realm, then sweeps us away on an extraordinary journey across the known world during the Age of Exploration. Rich with suspense, humor, international intrigue, and unforgettable characters, this is a story to awaken our own senses of awe and wonder.
“A Sense of the World gives us a man who embraced wanderlust at a time when the continents and oceans were much, much bigger.”
— New York Times
