ACHENBACH, Joel

PERSONAL: Married; children: three daughters. Education: Graduated from Princeton University.

ADDRESSES: Home—Washington, DC. Offıce— Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Journalist and author. Writer of syndicated column "Why Things Are" for seven years; Miami Herald, staff writer; Washington Post, staff writer, "Rough Draft" column, contributor to the Style section, and columnist for washingtonpost.com; National Geographic magazine, columnist. Commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

WRITINGS:

Why Things Are: Answers to Every Essential Question in Life (columns), foreword by Dave Barry, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 1991.

Why Things Are, Volume II: The Big Picture (columns), illustrated by Richard Thompson, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 1993.

Why Things Are and Why Things Aren't (columns), illustrated by Richard Thompson, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 1996.

Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

It Looks like a President Only Smaller: TrailingCampaign 2000, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Joel Achenbach is a journalist and staff writer for the Washington Post. He is also the author of numerous nonfiction titles, some of which are compilations of his humorous columns, and others, such as Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe and The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West, which cover new ground.

While at the Miami Herald, and later at the Washington Post, Achenbach wrote the syndicated column "Why Things Are," an often-humorous take on answers to some of the basic questions of life. These were collected in three volumes from 1991 to 1996. With his 1999 book Captured by Aliens, Achenbach presents "a summary of the various ways people try to deal with the idea that life might exist on other worlds," wrote Kelly Whitt in Astronomy. Despite the title, the book is not a study of alien abductions, but rather a look at whether or not humans are alone in the universe. Fully one half of the book deals with the work of famed American astronomer Carl Sagan and other scientists in their as-yet-fruitless search for extraterrestrial life; the second half of the book "ventures into the far-out," as Whitt explained, consisting of interviews with people ranging from those who believe they have been abducted by aliens to those who believe they have seen unidentified flying objects—UFOs—and examines topics from Roswell, New Mexico, to the Mars rock, and the Heaven's Gate cult. In these interviews Achenbach, as Whitt noted, "plays the perfect skeptic." Similarly, Carol Peace Robins, writing in the New York Times Book Review, wrote that Achenbach "writes with knowledge and wit," and also found him to be "a likable and most informative guide." Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Phil Tatman commented that Achenbach "has put together a fair, funny and philosophical overview of one of the major obsessions of the last fifty years." Further praise came from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Mark Pendergrast, who found Captured by Aliens a "vastly entertaining tangle of science and pseudoscientific lunacy."

Covering the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, Achenbach wrote a series of articles for the Washington Post that he later edited with bridging material to create the book It Looks like a President Only Smaller: Trailing Campaign 2000. These impressionistic glimpses of the campaign make no attempt at reality; rather, Achenbach pokes fun at some of the zanier elements of election-year politics with wild imaginings of presidential contender Al Gore offering George W. Bush a drink, or of Bush being upbraided by his father, former President George H. W. Bush. Gary Wills, writing in the New York Times Book Review, found little to laugh at in Achenbach's book: "Never very funny in the first place, these columns hardly add up to a book, even to a campaign book in the currently debased stage of the genre." Michael A. Genovese, reviewing the same work in Library Journal, had a somewhat more positive assessment, calling Achenbach's work "a cynical, sometimes funny, usually jaundiced view of the election." Booklist reviewer Mary Carroll dubbed the same book a "tongue-in-cheek campaign 'diary.'"

More serious in tone is Achenbach's 2004 title, The Grand Idea, a "revealing and often fascinating book," according to Booklist critic Jay Freeman. The book details first U.S. president George Washington's lifelong dream of opening up the American continent to the West, in this case to the territories just beyond the Appalachians. To that end, Washington hoped to make the Potomac River a channel to the West, creating commercial traffic to the Ohio River and opening up new lands for settlement. In 1784 Washington took a horseback ride into these western territories to see the reality of his grand idea. Achenbach uses this journey to explore topics from geography to farming techniques to the ethnic makeup of the new nation. A critic for Publishers Weekly wondered if it were possible to create "a snappy book about a river and horseback trip more than two centuries ago," and answered the question in the affirmative. The same contributor felt that Achenbach manages the task "with enough authority to satisfy historians and in a lively style sure to please general readers." For Library Journal critic Charles L. Lumpkins, "Achenbach successfully weaves Washington and early America with the Potomac." Higher praise came from Boston Globe contributor Douglas Brinkley, who called The Grand Idea a "riveting analysis of Washington's penchant for westward expansion," and from Washington Post Book World contributor Henry Wiencek, who observed that the book "mingles history, geography, geology, politics, early American scheming and go-getting, and thumbnail sketches of characters great and small."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Astronomy, April, 2000. Kelly Whitt, review of Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe, p. 98.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 26, 1999, Mark Pendergrast, review of Captured by Aliens, p. K12.

Booklist, April 15, 2001, Mary Carroll, review of ItLooks like a President Only Smaller: Trailing Campaign 2000, p. 1511; May 15, 2004, Jay Freeman, review of The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West, p. 1592.

Boston Globe, August 15, 2004, Douglas Brinkley, review of The Grand Idea, p. D8.

Chicago Sun-Times, November 28, 1999, Michael Shermer, review of Captured by Aliens, p. 15.

Chicago Tribune, February 22, 2000, Phil Tatman, review of Captured by Aliens, p. 3.

Denver Post, January 9, 2000, Steve Weinberg, review of Captured by Aliens, p. F5.

Futurist, January, 2000, review of Captured by Aliens, p. 59; May, 2000, Jeff Minerd, "Aliens: A Social Phenomenon" (review of Captured by Aliens), p. 16.

Library Journal, November 1, 1999, Jack W. Weigel, review of Captured by Aliens, p. 118; May 15, 2001, Michael A. Genovese, review of It Looks like a President Only Smaller, p. 144; August, 2004, Charles L. Lumpkins, review of The Grand Idea, p. 92.

Natural History, February, 2000, review of Captured by Aliens, p. 22.

New York Times Book Review, January 30, 2000, Carol Peace Robins, review of Captured by Aliens, p. 16; April 1, 2001, Garry Wills, review of It Looks like a President Only Smaller, pp. 8-9.

Publishers Weekly, April 19, 2004, review of TheGrand Idea, p. 48.

Skeptical Inquirer, March, 2000, David Morrison, review of Captured by Aliens, p. 50.

Washington Monthly, June, 2004, Adam Clymer, review of The Grand Idea, p. 54.

Washington Post Book World, July 4, 2004, Henry Wiencek, review of The Grand Idea, p. 4.

ONLINE

Scifi.com,http://www.scifi.com/ (October 12, 2004), "Joel Achenbach, Author of Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe."*