Buddy Levy Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

A man of many talents, Buddy Levy has worked as a Washington State University professor of English, television personality, and freelance writer. With more than thirty years as a teacher, Levy has contributed a lot to media, academia, and literature. Throughout his career, he has been the author of several narrative history books and a bunch of articles in adventure journalism and travel. His works have been in some of the most prestigious publications including Discover and Alaska Airlines Magazine. Among his most popular works of fiction is Conquistador, the novel chronicling the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire that is in development to be made into a TV series. As an academic, he has equally made some notable contributions as he taught creative writing, fostered literary talent, and mentored students at Washington State University. In addition to his writing, he has also worked in TV, and from 2010 to 2012, he was the host of the historical mystery show Decoded on History Channel.

Levy spent much of his childhood in Sun Valley Idaho where for the first few years, he attended a tiny middle school of only 31 students. It was while he was at that school that one of his teachers saw something in his stories during the creative writing class. It was that teacher who suggested that she work with Clara Spiegel the editor and writer who once worked with Hemingway, publishing some of his novels and going with him on safari. Clara worked with Buddy Levy on his short story and when he was just fourteen years old, it was published in the local newspaper. For much of this time in college, he wrote and published all manner of essays and poetry before he got into journalism during the 1990s. As a journalist, he wrote a lot about adventure races and expeditions and did a lot of writing for magazines. As a magazine writer, he wrote profiles and long-form event adventure coverage on activities ranging from skiing, mountaineering, hunting, and trekking.

As for how Buddy Levy got into writing about adventure and exploration, it all has to do with his father. As a child, his father introduced him to Ernest Hemingway and Jack London. Sun Valley where he grew up was a place where Hemingway spent a lot of time and hence Buddy was participating in outdoor adventure and reading from a very early age. He loved reading anything about people surviving in harsh environments and doing exploits in some very dangerous places. As such, this would become a natural theme for his novels. When he became a journalist, he was sent to cover a multi-sport race in Greenland where he met Ingerid Aase, the Norwegian. It was the latter who gave him a copy of The First Crossing of Greenland by Fridjof Nansen. After reading the novel and several more by the author, he was hooked on stories of polar explorers and Arctic exploration. This was how he started writing his novels set in the frozen Arctic.

Buddy Levy has now become known for his immersive writing and a profound ability to make compelling narratives from historical events as he brings to life stories of human endeavor, survival, and exploration. His contributions to media and literature have not only educated but also entertained audiences, making him one of the most significant figures in modern historical nonfiction. He usually writes in marathon sessions as he takes hours to craft his work from his office adorned with artifacts from all over the world. Most of the artifacts capture the essence of historical events and are a testament to his adventurous spirit.

Buddy Levy published Conquistador, one of his most popular novels in 2008. It is a work of scholarship that has all the thrills of an adventure fiction work, as the author tells the story of the last days of the Aztec empire. It chronicles a unique moment in human history when Hernan Cortes arrived on the Mexican coast in 1519 with a motley crew of adventurers, hoping to expand the Spanish empire. In Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, he met Montezuma, a man considered a god and king of fifteen million people. He also commands the most formidable military on the American shores. However, in less than two years, Cortes crushed the Aztecs, as he accomplished one of the most fascinating military conquests ever.. Buddy Levy meticulously researched the story as he tells of the superstition, cunning, brutality, courage, and ultimately disease that ensured victory for Hernan Cortes and his men. It is a brilliant story of a sophisticated and complex civilization with reverence for art, immense wealth, floating gardens, gruesome human sacrifice, and bloodstained temples that was destroyed in just a few years.

In 2019, Buddy Levy published the novel Labyrinth of Ice in which he tells the fascinating story of the harrowing adventures of the Greely Expedition. In 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely alongside 24 explorers and scientists headed for the Farthest North in what would become one of the most remarkable and horrific voyages ever undertaken. They deal with all manner of challenges from months of total darkness, sub-zero temperatures, and vicious wolves. By May 1882, they broke a three-century-old record and went back to camp to await the resupply ship – it never came. The ship had been blocked by a wall of ice 250 miles south leaving the men with dwindling provisions for a second winter in a row. With no resupply ship coming Greely rallies his men and they load all they have into five small boats as they head off into the dangerous water. A Fortnight later, with nothing but dangerous floes all around, they have to deal with new dangers that include mutiny, insanity, and cannibalism. But despite everything the men of the expedition desperately cling to life. It is a work that tells the true story of the lives and deaths of heroic voyages hell-bent on fortune and fame and how their expedition changed the world.

Buddy Levy published River of Darkness, one of his most fascinating novels to date in 2011. The work follows a sixteenth-century explorer, as he goes on a journey of exploration down the Amazon. In 1541, Gonzalo Pizarro the brutal conquistador and Francis Orellana his high-born lieutenant head off to find South America’s La Canela and the mythical El Dorado. With a massive company of hunting dogs, mercenaries, horses, enslaved natives, and other animals, they journey to the Andes. On the high mountains, the expedition begins to fall apart and it is not long before they become hopelessly lost in a labyrinth of swamps, their numbers culled by Indian attacks, starvations, and disease. At some point, Orellana and Pizarro decide to go their separate ways. Pizarro goes back home in rags and barefoot while Orellana and the fifty-seven brave souls go on to explore the unknown lengths of the Amazon to achieve glory. It combines newly unearthed details with eyewitness accounts to make a seminal story that will delight lovers of adventure from across all walks of life.