Tony Perrottet

The need for perpetual motion has always been Tony Perrottet's most obvious personality disorder. While studying history at Sydney University, the Australian-born Perrottet regularly disappeared hitch-hiking through the Outback, sailing the coast of Sumatra or traveling through rural India (enjoying a brief and inglorious career as a film extra in Rajasthan). After graduation, he moved to South America to work as a "roving correspondent," where he covered the Shining Path war in Peru, drug running in Colombia and several military rebellions in Argentina. A brief visit to Manhattan fifteen years ago convinced him that New York was the ideal place for a rootless wanderer to be based. From his current home in the East Village of Manhattan, he has continued to commute to Iceland, Tierra del Fuego, Beijing, Tasmania and Zanzibar, while contributing to international publications including Smithsonian Magazine (where he is a Contributing Writer), the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, Esquire, Outside, Afar and the London Sunday Times.

Perrottet is the author of six books — a collection of travel stories, Off the Deep End: Travels in Forgotten Frontiers (1997); Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists (2002); The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Greek Games (2004); Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped (2008); The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe (2012); and most recently, ¡Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel and the Improbable Revolution that Changed World History (2019). His travel stories have been translated into a dozen languages and widely anthologized, having been selected seven times for the Best American Travel Writing series. He is also a regular television guest on the History Channel, where he has spoken about everything from the Crusades to the birth of disco.