Discover the Best Books Written by William Langewiesche

William Langewiesche, born June 12, 1955, is an American author and journalist who was also a professional airplane pilot for many years. Since 2019 he has been a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. Prior to that, he was a correspondent for The Atlantic and Vanity Fair magazines for twenty-nine years. He is the author of nine books and the winner of two National Magazine Awards.

William Langewiesche is currently a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. From 2006-2019 he was an international correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine. Prior to that, he was the national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly magazine, where he was nominated for eight consecutive National Magazine Awards. He has written articles covering a wide range of topics, from shipbreaking, wine critics, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, modern ocean piracy, nuclear proliferation, and the World Trade Center cleanup.

Langewiesche grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended college in California, where he received a degree in cultural anthropology from Stanford University. He spent much of his time on various jobs flying airplanes, a skill he had acquired because of his family background. After college, Langewiesche moved to New York City and went to work as a writer for Flying, a large-circulation publication for general aviation pilots. While there, he wrote technical reports on the flight characteristics of various airplanes and profiles of people. In his mid-twenties, he quit the job in order to write books—one non-fiction and two novels—none of which was published.

He continued to travel and write, supporting himself by flying airplanes. The travels eventually took Langewiesche to the most remote parts of the Sahara desert and sub-Saharan West Africa. This became the subject of a cover story for The Atlantic Monthly in 1991 and later of a book titled Sahara Unveiled. The Atlantic sent Langewiesche to many parts of the world and increasingly into conflict zones. In 2006, while living in Baghdad to cover the Iraq war, Langewiesche left The Atlantic and went to work for Vanity Fair.

After the attacks of 9/11, Langewiesche was the only journalist given full unrestricted access to the World Trade Center site. He stayed there for nearly six months and produced "American Ground," a serialized report in The Atlantic Monthly. "American Ground" became a New York Times national bestselling book.