Robert Sullivan is the author of numerous books, including Rats, The Meadowlands, A Whale Hunt, and My American Revolution. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, A Public Space, and Vogue. He was born in New York City, worked for many years in Portland, Oregon, and now lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship.
"""A fascinating account of a crucial photographer of westward expansion and a reckoning with the colonization of the American West . . . Sullivan's research is meticulous and his storytelling engaging. O'Sullivan is an intriguing figure, but what is most fascinating is the author's examination of westward expansion as a kind of war of both arms and ideas . . . A riveting, highly valuable reexamination."" --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ""A compelling, haunted work of living history."" --Booklist (starred review) ""A large-hearted, wide-angled book, gutsy in the extreme, that cinches the reader tight to some of the most powerful landscapes in America. Robert Sullivan follows the nineteenth-century footsteps of photographer Timothy O'Sullivan, reports with artistry and passion on what they both saw, and makes you love the country in its darkness as well as its light. The double story--Sullivan's and O'Sullivan's--and the pinpoint details drew me in so I couldn't put it down."" --Ian Frazier, author of Cranial Fracking and On the Rez ""An astonishment, a terror, a revelation, of what can and cannot be seen. Double Exposure is a survey and a memoir--an investigation--of spectacle frozen in time, bleeding across a dangerous American land. 'Light is alive, ' writes Sullivan, and so, too, are these brilliant pages; they shimmer with vision. Sullivan's masterpiece should change the way we see past and present, this country and our many troubled selves."" --Jeff Sharlet, bestselling author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War ""Robert Sullivan's extraordinary book wears many hats: it is a biography of a phantom; an important slice of photographic history; a profound meditation on the American landscape; a reckoning with the legacies of slavery, the Civil War, and the war against the indigenous population; and a deep personal journey for the author on top of that. It is just as transformative an experience for the reader."" --Lucy Sante, author of Low Life and I Heard Her Call My Name"