Other Writings by Gerard Helferich
Fossils Versus Faith
Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2024. Review of Impossible Monsters by Michael Taylor and Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party by Edward Dolnick.
Taming the Mighty Mississippi
Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2024. Review of The Great River by Boyce Uphold.
Dreams of El Dorado
Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2024. Review of Paradise of the Damned by Keith Thomson.
An Essential American History
Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2024. Review of Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal.
Candido Rondon, Brazil's Greatest Explorer
Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2024. Review of Into the Amazon by Larry Rohter and River Without a Cause by Sam Moses.
Wreckage to the Surface
Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2024. Review of The Survivors of the Clotilda by Hannah Durbin.
A Midshipman's Mutiny
Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2023. Review of Sailing the Graveyard Sea by Richard Snow.
The Making of a Myth.
Wall Street Journal. September 10, 2023. Review of Oracle of Lost Causes by Matthew Christopher Hulbert.
Nature's Endangered Titans
Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2023. Review of The Heartbeat of the Wild by David Quammen.
Dreaming of Yosemite
Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2023. Review of Guardians of the Valley by Dean King.
The Man Who Shot Garfield
Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2023. Review of An Assassin in Utopia by Susan Wels.
Magellan Maligned
Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2022. Review of Straits by Felipe Fernández-Armesto.
The Nation's Private Navy
Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2022. Review of Rebels of the Sea by Eric Jay Dolin.
The Business of Blackmail in Gilded Age New York
CrimeReads, April 12, 2022. Published under the pen name W.H. Flint. Feature on William d'Alton Mann, the real-life blackmailer who is the victim in my novel Hot Time.
The Empire That Ended
Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2022. Review of The Inca by Kevin Lane.
Paragon of the Strenuous Life
Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2021. Review of Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy by Christopher Grasso.
The Habsburg of Chapultepec
Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2021. Review of The Last Emperor of Mexico by Edward Shawcross.
The Ebb and Flow of History
Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2021. Review of Water: A Biography by Giulio Boccaletti.
Vigilantes in the Dock
Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2021. Review of A Shot in the Moonlight by Ben Montgomery.
How to Carve a Civilization
Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2020. Review of The Age of Wood by Roland Ennos.
The Hard Road to Humility
Plough.com, October 19, 2020. Review of The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver.
Man Can Only Mar It
Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2020. Review of Leave It as It Is by David Gessner.
The Force That Flows
Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2020. Review of Rivers of Power by Laurence C. Smith.
Summer Books 2020: Nature
Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2020. Review of The Good Bee by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum, Honey and Venom by Andrew Coté, and A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings by Helen Jukes.
Two Books on Wyatt Earp: "Men with the Bark On"
Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2010. Review of Ride the Devil's Herd by John Boessenecker and Tombstone by Tom Clavin.
Independencia: September 2020
Essay in 15: Celebrating Fifteen Years of Literary Excellence from the San Miguel Writers' Conference. Parroquia Press, 2020.
Nature
Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2019. Review of Consider the Platypus by Maggie Ryan Sanford, The Photo Ark Vanishing by Joel Sartore, The Elephant in My Kitchen by Francoise Malby-Anthony, and On Dogs, an anthology.
Rivers, Mountains and Deserts
Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2019. Review of Dreams of El Dorado by H.W. Brands.
To Protect and Conserve
Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2018. Review of Natural Rivals by John Clayton.
California's Precious Resource
Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2019. Review of The Dreamt Land by Mark Arax.
When Ohio Was the Frontier
Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2019. Review of The Pioneers by David McCullough.
New Life for a Tree
Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2019. Review of The Sakura Obsession by Naoko Abe.
A Rough Road to Power
Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2019. Review of The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King by Jerome Charyn.
Thinking Like a Flower
Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2019. Review of The Revolutionary Genius of Plants by Stefano Mancuso.
The Perils of a Pathfinder
Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2018. Review of River Master by Cecil Kuhne, The Powell Expedition by Don Lago, and The Promise of the Grand Canyon by John F. Ross.
Taking the Long Way Around
Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2018. Review of This Land Is Our Land by Ken Ilgunas.
Taking the Bully Out of the Pulpit
Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2018. Review of William Howard Taft by Jeffrey Rosen.
Building 'the Source' of America's Cash Flows and Liquid Assets
Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2018. Review of The Source by Martin Doyle.
A River Ran Through It
Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2017. Review of Border Country by Martha Greene Phillips.
Shaken by Quakes
Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2017. Review of The Great Quake by Henry Fountain and Quakeland by Kathryn Miles.
Biloxi to Beaumont to Bonita Springs
Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2017. Review of The Gulf by Jack E. Davis.
Concord's Enchanted Forests
Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2017. Review of Expect Great Things by Kevin Dann.
A House at the End of the World
Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2016. Review of Orion on the Dunes by Daniel C. Payne.
The Wood-Wide Web
Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2016. Review of The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford, and Urban Forests by Jill Jonnes.
Life in the Fourth Quarter
Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2016. Review of Sixty by Ian Brown and Senior Moments by Willard Spiegelman.
Walks on the Wild Side
Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2016. Review of Green Metropolis by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers.
The Stalk of Asparagus
Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2016. Review of Washington's Monument by John Steele Gordon.
Book Reveals Roosevelt As Icon in the Making
Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, December 13, 2015. Review of American Cyclone by John M. Hilpert.
A Student of the Strenuous Life
Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2015. Review of Theodore Roosevelt in the Field by Michael R. Canfield.
Purple Mountains Majesty
Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2015. Review of Landscapes for the People by Ren and Helen Davis.
From Day Break to Sunset
Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2015. Review of How the World Moves by Peter Nabokov.
Drum Taps and Bugle Blasts
Wall Street Journal, June 27, 2015. Review of American Meteor by Norman Lock.
A Museum of the Open Air
Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2015. Review of The Lost World of the Old Ones by David Roberts.
The Assassin's Assassin
Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2015. Review of The Madman and the Assassin by Scott Martelle.
Kickoff Time for the Forty-Niners
Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2014. Review of The Rush by Edward Dolnick.
No Redcoats in the Black Hills
Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2014. Review of West of the Revolution by Claudio Saunt.
White Gold: Can Cotton Make a Comeback in the Land Where It Was Once King?
Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2014.
Astor's Northwest Passage
Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2014. Review of Astoria by Peter Stark.
Glorious Misadventures by Owen Matthews
Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2104. Book review.
Where Earth and Water Parted
Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2012. Review of Telling Our Way to the Sea by Aaron Hirsh.
The Fabric of Our Times
Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2013. Review of Cotton by Giorgio Riello.
America on the Wing
Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2013. Review of Butterfly People by William Leach.
The Twister Tale
Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2013. Review of Storm Kings by Lee Sandlin.
Cry Me a Tributary
Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2012. Review of River Notes by Wade Davis.
The Ties That Bound
Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2012. Review of The Great Railroad Revolution by Christian Wolmar, Railroads and the American People by H. Roger Grant, and The Great American Railroad War by Dennis Drabelle.
Looking South, Finding America
Wall Street Journal, June 27, 2012. Review of Herbert Eugene Bolton by Albert L. Hurtado.
The Country Primeval
Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2012. Review of American Canopy by Eric Rutkow.
A Pre-Digital Tomb Raider
Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2011. Review of Belzoni by Ivor Noel Hume.
Excerpt from Stone of Kings
Online literary journal Sol: English Writing in Mexico.
The Last Tribes Standing
Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2011. Review of The Unconquered by Scott Wallace.
Old Salt, Dead Sea
Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2011. Review of Bitter Waters by David Haward Bain.
In a Lost City, Finding Yourself
Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2011. Review of Turn Right at Mach Picchu by Mark Adams.
Cosmic Conspiracy Theories
Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2011. Review of The Order of Days by David Stuart.
Escaping the Rainforest
Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2011. Review of River of Darkness by Buddy Levy.
Online literary journal Sol: English Writing in Mexico.
The Last Tribes Standing
Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2011. Review of The Unconquered by Scott Wallace.
Old Salt, Dead Sea
Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2011. Review of Bitter Waters by David Haward Bain.
In a Lost City, Finding Yourself
Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2011. Review of Turn Right at Mach Picchu by Mark Adams.
Cosmic Conspiracy Theories
Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2011. Review of The Order of Days by David Stuart.
Escaping the Rainforest
Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2011. Review of River of Darkness by Buddy Levy.
Incredible Journey
Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2011. Review of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley.
Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2011. Review of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley.