Kurson began his career as a lawyer, graduating from
Harvard Law School in 1990, and practicing real estate law. Kurson's professional writing career began at the
Chicago Sun-Times, where he started as a sports agate clerk and soon gained a full-time features writing job. In 2000,
Esquire published "My Favorite Teacher," his first magazine story, which became a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He moved from the
Sun-Times to
Chicago magazine, His stories have appeared in
Rolling Stone,
The New York Times Magazine,
Shadow Divers In 2004,
Random House published Kurson's book
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II. The book follows two New Jersey divers,
John Chatterton and
Richie Kohler, as they spend six years leading an effort to identify a
World War II German
U-boat.
Shadow Divers spent 24 weeks on the
New York Times Bestseller list peaking at No. 2, and has been profiled by publications including
CBS News,
TIME Magazine,
NPR,
The Washington Post,
The Los Angeles Times, and others. The book is often favorably compared to
Sebastian Junger's
The Perfect Storm and
Jon Krakauer's
Into Thin Air.
Shadow Divers was awarded the
American Booksellers Association's 2005 "Book of the Year Award". The book was also awarded the
American Library Association's
Alex Award. The book was translated into 22 languages.
Crashing Through Kurson wrote the nonfiction book
Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See, which was published in 2007.
Crashing Through recounts the story of
Mike May, a prominent American entrepreneur and sports enthusiast, who regains his eyesight after a lifetime of blindness. Kurson based the book on his 2005 award-winning article "Into the Light" in
Esquire. "Into the Light" won the 2006
National Magazine Award. The book debuted on
The New York Times Bestseller list.
Pirate Hunters In
Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship, published in 2015, Kurson tells the nonfiction story of two
shipwreck divers, John Chatterton (who was also featured in
Shadow Divers) and
John Mattera, on their search for the wreck of the 17th-century
pirate ship
Golden Fleece, which had been stolen by its captain
Joseph Bannister and was later sunk by damage from a battle with two
frigates of the
Royal Navy. The book was a
New York Times Bestseller.
Rocket Men In 2018 Kurson released
Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon. The book recounts the
Apollo 8 mission, set against the backdrop of 1968, one of the most violent and divisive years in American history. ==Bibliography==