McAlpine, Ken 1959-

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McALPINE, Ken 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959; married; wife's name Kathy; children: two.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Ventura, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Author and freelance writer.

WRITINGS:

(With Scott Tinley) Scott Tinley's Winning Guide to Sports Endurance: How to Maximize Speed, Strength, and Stamina, Rodale Press (Emmaus, PA), 1994.

Diving the World, photographs by Norbert Wu, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates (Westport, CT), 2003.

Off-Season: Discovering America on Winter's Shore, Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to Sports Illustrated, Outside, Readers's Digest, and Los Angeles Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ken McAlpine is a travel writer whose work has regularly appeared in the Los Angeles Times among other periodicals. In 1994 he put together an encyclopedia with Scott Tinley, a two-time Ironman champ, entitled Scott Tinley's Winning Guide to Sports Endurance: How to Maximize Speed, Strength, and Stamina. The book consists of five parts, each of which is ordered alphabetically. Topics such as nutrition, doping, and sports injuries are discussed. In Runner's World, Dave Kuehls praised McAlpine's "conversational, reader-friendly style" and called the book "handy."

McAlpine also wrote the text for Diving the World, a book containing over four-hundred underwater photos by Norbert Wu. While Wu's pictures show the most popular scuba diving areas in the world, McAlpine's text describes them. Margaret Rioux, a contributor to Library Journal, noted the book's "coffee-table size and weight," but added that it "is still highly recommended to all those who enjoy diving and underwater photography."

McAlpine's life-long infatuation with beaches is reflected in his 2004 book Off-Season: Discovering America on Winter's Shore. McAlpine chronicles his five-month-long trip along the U.S. Atlantic coast that started in southern Florida and ended up in Maine. While on the road he tries to get a feel for places by mingling with the locals, whose lives often change during the tourist off-season. Some locals struggle to make a living, while others cherish the quiet and peace that winter brings.

Critical reaction to Off-Season was positive. In Kirkus Reviews, Stuart Bernstein found it to be "a thoroughly pleasant read, tailor-made for the Reader's Digest audience." A Publishers Weekly contributor also called it a "pleasant travelogue," while Robert Finn pointed out in Bookreporter.com that Off-Season "has a subtle undercurrent of concern for an imperiled American lifestyle."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2004, review of Off-Season: Discovering America on Winter's Shore, p. 379.

Library Journal, February 1, 2004, Margaret A. Rioux, review of Diving the World, p. 119; May 1, 2004, Herbert E. Shapiro, review of Off-Season, p. 132.

Publishers Weekly, May 17, 2004, review of Off-Season, p. 42.

Runner's World, December, 1994, Dave Kuehls, review of Scott Tinley's Winning Guide to Sports Endurance: How to Maximize Speed, Strength, and Stamina, p. 61.