Edward Hoagland (born December 21, 1932) is an American author best known for his nature and travel writing. Life Hoagland was born in New York, New York and attended Harvard University. He joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the summers of 1951 and 1952. He helped to tend the big cats and later sold a novel about this experience, Cat Man (1955), before graduating from Harvard in 1954. After serving two years in the Army, he published The Circle Home (1960), a novel about boxing, before going on the first of nine trips to Alaska and British Columbia. During the 1970s, he made the first two of his five trips to Africa. After receiving two Guggenheim Fellowships, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1982. He has taught at The New School, Rutgers, Sarah Lawrence, CUNY, the University of Iowa, U.C. Davis, Columbia University, Beloit College, and Brown University. In 2005, Hoagland retired from a teaching position at Bennington College in Vermont. Since 1968, he has focused most of his energies on Montaigne-type essays. According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Since his retirement, he has spent his summers in Barton, Vermont at a place he has owned since 1969, and his winters in Martha's Vineyard. Critique His non-fiction has been widely praised by writers such as John Updike, who called him "the best essayist of my generation." Bibliography Books Cat Man, Houghton Mifflin, 1956; NAL, 1958; Ballantine, 1973; Arbor House, 1984; Lyons Press, 2003 The Circle Home, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960; Avon, 1977; Lyons Press, 2003 The Peacock's Tail, McGraw-Hill, 1965 Notes from the Century Before: A Journal from British Columbia, Random House, 1969; Ballantine, 1972; North Point Press, 1982; Sierra Club Books, 1995; Modern Library, 2002 The Courage of Turtles, Random House, 1971; Warner, 1974; North Point Press, 1985; Lyons & Burford, 1993 Walking the Dead Diamond River, Random House, 1973; Warner, 1974; North Point Press, 1985; Lyons & Burford, 1993 The Moose on the Wall, Barrie & Jenkins, 1974 Red Wolves and Black Bears, Random House, 1976; Penguin, 1983; Lyons & Burford, 1995 African Calliope: A Journey to the Sudan, Random House, 1979; Penguin, 1981; Lyons & Burford, 1995 The Edward Hoagland Reader, Random House, 1979; Vintage, 1981 The Tugman's Passage, Random House, 1982; Penguin, 1983; Lyons & Burford, 1995 City Tales, Capra Press, 1986 Seven Rivers West,