Glick, Daniel 1956-

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Glick, Daniel 1956-

PERSONAL: Born 1956, in CA; divorced; children: Kolya (son), Zoe. Education: University of California at Berkeley, M.J.

ADDRESSES: Home— CO.

CAREER: Newsweek magazine, investigative reporter, c. 1988-2001, including national correspondent in Washington, DC, and special correspondent covering Rocky Mountain region, c. 1994-2001; freelance writer, 2001—. Has also worked as an English teacher and yak herder in Tibet. Associate producer of documentary on JonBenet Ramsey, JonBenet’s America.

AWARDS, HONORS: Ted Scripps fellowship, 1999-2000; Knight International Journalism Fellowship; Colorado Book Award, for Monkey Dancing.

WRITINGS

Powder Burn: Arson, Money, and Mystery on Vail Mountain, PublicAffairs Books (New York, NY), 2001, revised edition, 2003.

Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth, PublicAffairs Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Outside, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Sports Afield, National Wildlife, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Harper’s, and Wilderness. Author’s works have been translated into Italian, Korean, and Japanese.

SIDELIGHTS: Daniel Glick spent more than a decade as a staff reporter for Newsweek magazine, undertaking assignments as varied as reporting on the demise of the Siberian tiger in the Russian Far East and the murder-suicides at Columbine High School. He was deeply involved in reporting on the death of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey and the subsequent investigation into the high-profile murder, and appeared many times on television as a commentator on the case. Elsewhere, Glick’s reportage has covered politics, science—especially environmental issues— and news items of international interest arising in the Rocky Mountain region, where he was based from 1994 through 2001. Since 2001 Glick has been a freelance writer, placing work in national magazines and publishing two nonfiction books on ecological issues.

Powder Burn: Arson, Money, and Mystery on Vail Mountain examines the mysterious fire in October, 1998, that destroyed an exclusive ski resort in Vail, Colorado. What Glick uncovers in the course of his investigation defies the easy black-and-white picture of eco-terrorism first painted in the press to explain the twelve-million-dollar arson. As a reviewer noted in a Trail & Timberline piece, what emerges in Powder Burn“is nothing less than the riveting story of the complete corporatization... not only of our public lands, but also the social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental sphere within a thirty-mile radius of the town of Vail.” Glick shows that the ownership of the resort, Vail Resorts, Inc., had incurred the wrath of many local interests beyond merely the environmentalists seeking to protect a lynx habitat. Those in opposition to Vail Resorts, Inc., included migrant laborers, local businesses edged out by the resort’s opening its own restaurants, stores, and tours, and even middle-class skiers who resented the corporation’s decisions to cater to an ever more exclusive elite.

Washington Monthly correspondent Bill McKibben called Powder Burn“a detective story where the crime turns out to be nowhere near the most evil act,” and Sam Weller in the Chicago Tribune Books deemed the work “a savvy, engrossing whodunit.” In a review for the St. Petersburg Times, Jack Reed noted: “While he gives us a look into the secretive world of radical environmentalism, Glick’s greatest accomplishment is his insightful critique of the ski resort business.”GearReview contributor Steve Mann observed that the book “exposes the raw nerves of political, economic, recreational, and environmental forces playing out over the entire West. The blazes on Vail Mountain symbolize the smoldering conflict between industrial tourism and land preservation.” Brian Howard, writing in E Magazine: The Environmental Magazine, called Glick’s book a “valuable template for understanding the roots of eco-terrorism” in the United States and throughout the world.

Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth provides new challenges for Glick. For the first time he writes in the first person, and the story of his decision—in the wake of his difficult divorce and his brother’s death—to take his two young children on an extended trip around the world is intensely personal. At the same time, Monkey Dancing addresses many of the issues that Glick sees as globally important. These include habitat destruction and the extinction of species, the challenge of living an engaged life, and the political implications of traveling as an American in foreign countries as the terrorist attack events of September 11, 2001, were unfolding in New York. Throughout the narrative, he reflects on his brother’s life and his death from a rare form of male breast cancer. He also works to reconcile his feelings about his divorce and the fact that his wife left him for another woman. Glick uses the trip as a means of reaching peace with himself and his life, and also as a means of building a closer bond between himself and his children. In doing so, he works to instill in them a love and appreciation of the natural world and the living things within it.

A Kirkus Reviews critic called the book a “fine and mordant account of experiencing things before they melt into air, stitching the remnants of a family’s old lives into a whole new cloth.” A Publishers Weekly critic commented, “This unusual, superbly written and deeply human story of their travels is a consistently rewarding odyssey.” In her Los Angeles Times Book Review critique, Bernadette Murphy wrote that Glick’s “rich narrative traces [the family’s] five-month sojourn, a trip filled with wonder and awe.” Murphy added: “Although readers may disagree with some of Glick’s parenting choices along the way, we see clearly how huge an endeavor it is to travel around the world as a single father with two children.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Amicus Journal, summer, 2001, Marc Peruzzi, review of Powder Burn: Arson, Money, and Mystery on Vail Mountain, p. 35.

E Magazine: The Environmental Magazine, May-June, 2001, Brian Howard, “Arson on the Mountain,” review of Powder Burn, p. 60.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2003, review of Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth, p. 584. Library Journal, May 1, 2003, Rebecca Bollen, review of Monkey Dancing, p. 144. Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 8, 2003, Bernadette Murphy, “A Global Journey of Discovery for Self and Family.”

Publishers Weekly, May 5, 2005, review of Monkey Dancing, p. 213.

St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, FL), March 4, 2001, Jack Reed, “Investigating Ecotage on Vail Mountain.”

Trail & Timberline, May-June, 2001, “Glick’s Powder Burn a Literary Powder Keg.”

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), June 17, 2001, Sam Weller, review of Powder Burn, p. 3.

Washington Monthly, May, 2001, Bill McKibben, “Ski Moguls,” review of Powder Burn, p. 52.