Thomas Kohnstamm
Encyclopedia
Thomas Kohnstamm is an American author, and travel writer who worked previously for Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet is the largest travel guide book and digital media publisher in the world. The company is owned by BBC Worldwide, which bought a 75% share from the founders Maureen and Tony Wheeler in 2007 and the final 25% in February 2011...

.

Kohnstamm's travel writing mainly covers Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

 and the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

.
In addition to Lonely Planet, he has worked for various magazines and newspapers. Kohnstamm is a graduate of both Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...

, holds an MA in Latin American Studies
Latin American Studies
Latin American studies is an academic discipline dealing with the study of Latin America and Latin Americans.-Definition:Latin American studies critically examines the history, culture, politics, and experiences of Latin Americans in Latin America and often also elsewhere .Latin American studies...

 and speaks both Spanish and Portuguese.

Books

Kohnstamm’s book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? is a memoir and gonzo travelogue written by Thomas Kohnstamm and published by Three Rivers Press.The book was met with a global media controversy prior to its release and positive reviews when it hit the shelves in April 2008....

, a gonzo
Gonzo journalism
Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. The word "gonzo" is believed to be first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style...

 style memoir was published by Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

/Three Rivers Press
Three Rivers Press
Three Rivers Press is the trade paperback imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House. It publishes original paperback titles as well as paperback reprints of books issued initially in hardcover by the other Crown imprints.- History :...

 in April 2008.

Controversy

Kohnstamm came to general public attention prior to the release of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? is a memoir and gonzo travelogue written by Thomas Kohnstamm and published by Three Rivers Press.The book was met with a global media controversy prior to its release and positive reviews when it hit the shelves in April 2008....

. The author drew criticism, and allegedly death threats, after he was quoted as admitting to performing a "desk update" for a guidebook to Colombia. He stated in the interview that "They didn't pay me enough to go (to) Colombia. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian Consulate." This quote was incorrectly interpreted as implying that he had updated destination sections of the book, for which he would have been expected to visit the country, rather than merely background material. A quote was also taken from his book that said "...what I can’t plagiarize, I can always make up," calling into question both the accuracy and the practices of his fellow travel writers.

Subsequently Kohnstamm agreed that the situation had been "blown way out of proportion." and agreed his "regrettable" and "unfortunate choice of words" about Colombia had come off as "flippant", but claimed they were not merely self promotion, but were 'part of a larger interview and digression'. He argued that the "...what I can’t plagiarize, I can always make up," quote lifted from the book had been intended "to be humorous" when taken in context.

Lonely Planet immediately responded to the furor: Regarding Kohnstamm's claim to have written for the Colombia guide without having revisited the country, Lonely Planet clarified that he had only been commissioned to write the introduction and history chapters for that book, stating "when he was commissioned it was understood that he wouldn't be going to the destination", an explanation confirmed by Kohnstamm, who claimed this quote too had been taken out of context by the Publisher's publicists. Lonely Planet's publisher Piers Pickard defended their rate of pay, and the accuracy of their work.

Other writers defended Kohnstamm's claims in regards to the behaviour of those in the industry, contrasting with those of Pickard who claimed "no freebies — period", before admitting that they could be taken when "obtained through a tourist office", but not in "exchange for positive content". Pickard also admitted to the practice of completing guides from a desk, but only in "cases where writers cannot travel to dangerous areas" or the scope of the project, suggesting "We can't cover the whole of the Australian outback. That's like imagining our authors sleep in every single hotel". Lonely Planet, through editor Christopher Ward, re-assured their readers that in Kohnstamm's work there were "only the kind of minor inaccuracies we would normally expect of guidebook text that was coming up to its review date", indicating that his description of his own fallacies may have been partly made up too.

Whilst criticism of the author was prevalent with one observing "were I his editor, I’d want his blood", reviews of the actual book were often supportive, with the same reviewer stating "As a reader...I could not get enough of the most depraved travel book of the year". Others praised Kohnstamm's "spirited prose".

Since the publication of Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? Kohnstamm has written articles on subversive travel literature for the travel site Worldhum-The Best Travel Stories on the Internet, as well as a variety of articles on destination travel for Forbes. His guidebook-writing career seems to have ended.

External links

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