William Langewiesche

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William Archibald Langewiesche (Template:IPAc-en;<ref name=CJR>Template:Cite news</ref> June 12, 1955 – June 15, 2025) was an American author, journalist and commercial pilot. After taking part in aviation and flying airplanes he worked with a large-circulation aviation publication, Flying. As an author and journalist he worked as a correspondent for 16 years with The Atlantic and 13 years with Vanity Fair magazine. From 2019 until his death in 2025, he was a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. He was the author of nine books and the winner of two National Magazine Awards.

Langewiesche wrote articles covering a wide range of topics from shipbreaking, wine critics, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, modern ocean piracy, nuclear proliferation, and the World Trade Center cleanup. It was said of him that he wrote with "clear, poetic precision" and "elevated non-fiction writing to an art form".<ref name="Obituary William Langewiesche">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Education and early life

Langewiesche was born in Sharon, Connecticut, on June 12, 1955.<ref name="nyt-obit-25">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His father Wolfgang was a German test pilot who had written a book, "Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying". Wolfgang took his son flying from the age of four and Langewiesche made his first solo flight aged 14.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His mother Priscilla (nee Coleman) was a computer analyst and a professor at Princeton University Art Museum.<ref name="Obituary William Langewiesche"/> He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Day School, and attended college in California, receiving a degree in cultural anthropology from Stanford University.<ref name="mediabistro.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He paid his college fees by flying air taxis and charters.<ref name="Obituary William Langewiesche"/><ref name="newnewjournalism.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="nyt-obit-25" /><ref name="av web profile">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Career

After college, Langewiesche moved to New York City and worked as a writer for Flying, a large-circulation publication for general aviation pilots.<ref name="mediabistro.com"/> He wrote technical reports on the flight characteristics of various aircraft and profiles of people. He quit the job in his mid-twenties in order to write books—one non-fiction and two novels— which were not published.<ref name="mediabistro.com"/>

Langewiesche continued to travel and write, supporting himself by flying airplanes. His travels took him to the most remote parts of the Sahara desert and sub-Saharan West Africa<ref name="mediabistro.com"/> which became the subject of a cover story for The Atlantic Monthly in 1991, and later of a book, Sahara Unveiled,<ref name="theatlantic.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> after he had sent an unsolicited 20,000 word manuscript to the magazine. One of Atlantic's editors, Cullen Murphy, remembered Langewiesche's writing as "a blend of natural history, travelogue, black humour and adventure story, rendered in deceptively simple prose."<ref name="Obituary William Langewiesche"/> He became a correspondent for The Atlantic and wrote for the magazine for 15 years "on a vast array of topics". With his experience as a professional pilot and knowledge of flying he often wrote about air disasters.<ref name="Obituary William Langewiesche"/>

After the attacks in the US of 9/11, Langewiesche was the only journalist given full and unrestricted access to the World Trade Center site in New York.<ref name="theatlantic.com"/> He stayed there for nearly six months and wrote a serialized report, "American Ground, for The Atlantic,<ref name="newnewjournalism.com"/> the longest piece of reporting the magazine had published. A book, "American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center" became a New York Times national bestselling book.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The Atlantic sent Langewiesche to various parts of the world and increasingly into conflict zones.<ref name="theatlantic.com"/> As national correspondent for The Atlantic, he was a finalist for eight consecutive National Magazine Awards.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2006, while living in Baghdad to cover the Iraq War, Langewiesche left The Atlantic, which had moved to Washington, after 16 years and joined Vanity Fair, where he was an international correspondent until 2019.<ref name="newnewjournalism.com" /> His final magazine position was as writer at large at the New York Times Magazine, from 2019 to his death in 2025.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Langewiesche's 2007 article "Jungle Law" involved him in the controversy surrounding Chevron Corporation and Steven R. Donziger.<ref name="miamiherald.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Personal life and death

Langewiesche was the son of German aviator, test pilot, and journalist Wolfgang Langewiesche, author of Stick and Rudder, and Priscila (Template:Nee Coleman).<ref name="nyt-obit-25"/> He had a sister, Lena. He lived in California, New York and France.<ref name="nyt-obit-25" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Langewiesche married Anne-Marie Girard in 1977; they had two children, Matthew and Anna. They divorced in 2017. Langewiesche married designer Tia Cibani in 2018 with whom he had two more children, Archibald and Castine.<ref name="nyt-obit-25"/><ref name="home">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Langewiesche died of prostate cancer in East Lyme, Connecticut, on June 15, 2025, three days after his 70th birthday.<ref name="nyt-obit-25"/>

Awards

Winner

  • 2007 National Magazine Award for Public Interest for Rules of Engagement<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Finalist

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  • 2006 National Magazine Award for Reporting for The Wrath of Khan<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • 2005 Lettre Ulysses Award for The Outlaw Sea<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • 2005 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for A Sea Story<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • 2004 National Magazine Award for Reporting for Columbia's Last Flight<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref>
  • 2004 Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage for American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • 2003 National Magazine Award for Reporting for American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center<ref name=":0" />
  • 2002 National Book Critic's Circle Award for American Ground: Unbuilding The World Trade Center<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • 2001 National Magazine Award for Profiles for The Million-Dollar Nose<ref name=":0" />
  • 2000 National Magazine Award for Profiles for Eden: A Gated Community<ref name=":0" />
  • 1999 National Magazine Award for Reporting for The Lessons of ValuJet 592<ref name=":0" />
  • 1992 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for The World in Its Extreme<ref name=":0" />

Bibliography

Books

Essays and reporting

1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s

References

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