Koppel, Tom

PERSONAL: Married. Education: University of Pennsylvania, B.A., 1966; University of Wisconsin, Ph.D., 1972.

ADDRESSES: Home—193 Richard Flack Rd., Salt Spring Island, British Columbia V8K 1N4, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Journalist, beginning c. 1985; Rabochaya Gazeta, Kiev, Ukraine, visiting staff, 1989–90.

MEMBER: Periodical Writers Association of Canada (Victoria Chapter).

AWARDS, HONORS: Public Writing Award, Canadian Archaeological Association, 1992, for Canadian Geographic article "The Peopling of North America"; Public Communications Award, Canadian Archaeological Association, 1996, for Canadian Geographic feature "The Spirit of Haida Gwaii"; British Columbia Arts Council grant, 1998, for research and writing of a book on the Ballard fuel cell; also earned awards from the Canadian Science Writers' Association for his investigative research.

WRITINGS:

Kanaka: The Untold Story of Hawaiian Pioneers in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, Whitecap Books (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1995.

Powering the Future: The Ballard Fuel Cell and the Race to Change the World, Wiley (New York, NY), 1999.

Lost World: Rewriting Prehistory; How New Science Is Tracing America's Ice Age Mariners, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Also author of several features for the British Columbia Ministry of the Secretary of State, the British Columbia Ministry of Education, and the British Columbia Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Recreation and Culture. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Vancouver Sun, Porthole Magazine, Quill & Quire, Canadian Geographic, Canadian Living, and Reader's Digest.

SIDELIGHTS: Canadian journalist Tom Koppel has written everything from feature articles and profiles to technical reports and books. His subjects are drawn from many different fields, including geography, archeology, history, science, and travel. His first book, Kanaka: The Untold Story of Hawaiian Pioneers in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, chronicles the lives of the Kanakas, a group of Hawaiian people who settled in the Salt Spring Island region of British Columbia, where Koppel himself resides.

In 1999 Koppel published Powering the Future: The Ballard Fuel Cell and the Race to Change the World. "This book tells the fascinating story of the development of the Ballard fuel cell and how a small Canadian company grew to world-class stature and went on to form partnerships with some of the largest companies in the world," stated Timothy E. Lipman in the American Scientist. The purpose of fuel cell technology is to create an environment-friendly alternative to the internal combustion engine. Fuel cells use hydrogen and oxygen, rather than gasoline or other polluting fuels, to generate electricity. Koppel's book traces the history of Ballard Power Systems, the small Canadian research company that fine-tuned fuel cell design and went on to achieve amazing success. The book includes many quotations from the cofounders of Ballard Power Systems, including Geoffrey Ballard, Paul Howard, and Keith Prater, as well as Firoz Rasul, who took over as president and chief executive officer when the company began to transform into a manufacturing facility.

Writing for Library Journal, Eric C. Shoaf felt that Powering the Future relies too heavily on technical jargon, but the critic believed that "the technically advanced may find this book compelling." Lipman expressed an opposing sentiment, regarding the book as "entertaining and generally nontechnical" and recommending it "for those in or out of the energy and transportation fields." In a review for Environment, Robert M. Margolis acknowledged that "Powering the Future is an interesting and timely account" of Ballard's success.

Koppel's next book, Lost World: Rewriting Prehistory; How New Science Is Tracing America's Ice Age Mariners, follows a team of scientists as they try to determine how the first people arrived in North America. A long-standing and widely accepted theory is that the first people to arrive in America were big-game hunters from Asia who crossed a land bridge over the Bering Strait. Koppel, and the scientists whom he follows, believe that the first people in America did not come by land, but rather came via coastal migration, arriving along the coast by water. Koppel takes readers along as scientists crawl through caves, dive beneath the sea, camp in the woods, gather scientific data, and celebrate new discoveries.

In a Kirkus Reviews critique, one contributor noted that "despite the author's overt cheerleading for the coastal theory," Lost World is "a good overview of a fascinating slice of prehistory." Library Journal contributor Ann Forister observed that the author slowly breaks down the big-game hunter theory and "begins building a new one of how and when the earliest humans arrived" in North America. One "highlight" of this book, according to Thomas Dillehay in American Antiquity, is "a review of a wide variety of underwater and other exploratory techniques and of key happenings in archeology, geology, and paleontology." Dillehay went on to say that "the story and some ideas are interesting, stimulating even."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Antiquity, January, 2005, Thomas Dillehay, review of Lost World: Rewriting Prehistory; How New Science Is Tracing America's Ice Age Mariners, p. 202.

American Scientist, September, 2000, Timothy E. Lip-man, "Fuel Cell Start-Up," review of Powering the Future: The Ballard Fuel Cell and the Race to Change the World, p. 468.

Environment, July, 2000, Robert M. Margolis, review of Powering the Future, p. 43.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2003, review of Lost World, p. 588.

Library Journal, November 1, 1999, Eric C. Shoaf, review of Powering the Future, p. 121; June 15, 2003, Ann Forister, review of Lost World, p. 96.

Mechanical Engineering-CIME, June, 2000, review of Powering the Future, p. 96.

Natural Life, January-February, 2000, review of Powering the Future, p. 29.

ONLINE

Periodical Writers Association of Canada, Victoria Chapter Web site, http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/ (January 19, 2006), "Author Profiles: Tom Koppel."

Simon & Schuster Web site, http://www.simonsays.com/ (January 19, 2006), description of Lost World and biography of Tom Koppel.