Peter Matthiessen (born May 22 in New York in 1927) is an American naturalist and writer, author of works of non-fiction and fiction.
Matthiessen's works are known to be extremely well documented. It has often focused on issues affecting American Indians and their history, such as its detailed study of the case of Leonard Peltier, In the Spirit of the Crazy Horse.
George Plimpton, Harold Humes, Thomas Guinzburg and Donald Hall, in 1953 he founded the literary magazine The Paris Review. At the time, was a young rookie of the CIA, and he used the magazine to cover.
In his book The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen about his tumultuous relationship with his wife Deborah and their separations recurring relationship that culminated in a deep commitment to each other after she was diagnosed with a cancer. She died in New York in late 1972. They had 4 children, the youngest, Alex, with 7 or 8 years old when his mother's death. The following year, in September, Matthiessen took part in an expedition in the Himalayas with biologist George Schaller, shipping it narrative in the book The Snow Leopard.
In 1979, the book won the National Book Award prize in the category "Contemporary Thought." In his novel Freedom in the fields of the Lord, tells the story of an American missionary in a South American tribe, served in 1991 as the basis for the script for a Hollywood film directed by Hector Babenco. Blue Meridian, his book on oceanographic research, introduced the film by Peter Gimbel and Jim Lipscomb, Blue Water, White Death, which is generally regarded as the inspiration for Peter Benchley wrote in his novel The Jaws in 1974. Matthiessen has been responsible official of the State of New York from 1995 to 1997.
More recently, the trilogy of Matthiessen Killing Mr. Watson, Lost Man's River and Bone by Bone was based on the stories of the death of Edgar Watson, a grower in Florida who died shortly after the hurricane that swept the South East of Florida in 1910.
Peter Matthiessen and his wife Deborah were practitioners of Zen Buddhism. Matthiessen later became a Buddhist monk. He lives in Sagaponack, in New York.
Fiction
Race Rock (1954)
Partisans (1955)
Raditzer (1961)
At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965)
Far Tortuga (1975)
On the River Styx and Other Stories (1989)
Killing Mister Watson (1990)
Lost Man's River (1997)
Bone by Bone (1999)
Non-fiction
Wildlife in America (1959)
The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness (1961)
Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in the Stone Age (1962)
"The Atlantic Coast," a chapter in The American Heritage Book of Natural Wonders (1963)
The Shorebirds of North America (1967)
Oomingmak (1967)
Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution (1969)
Blue Meridian. The Search for the Great White Shark (1971).
The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972)
The Snow Leopard (1978)
Sand Rivers (1981)
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983)
Indian Country (1984)
Nine-headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982 (1986)
Men's Lives: The Surfmen and Bayen of the South Fork (1986)
African Silences (1991)
Baikal: Sacred Sea of Siberia (1992)
East of Lo Monthang: In the Land of the Mustang (1995)
The Peter Matthiessen Reader: Nonfiction, 1959-1961 (2000)
Tigers in the Snow (2000)
The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes (2001)
End of the Earth: Voyage to Antarctica (2003)
