Tom Miller (travel writer)

His ten books include The Panama Hat Trail, On the Border, Trading with the Enemy, and Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink (later rereleased as Revenge of the Saguaro).

He has written articles for the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Smithsonian, Natural History, Rolling Stone, Life, Crawdaddy and many other magazines.

In 1971 the Internal Security Division of the U.S. Justice Department probing the anti-Vietnam war protests, subpoenaed Miller to testify before a grand jury.

He refused to enter the grand jury room, claiming First Amendment rights that as a journalist, even free-lance for the underground press, to testify in secret would place a cloak of suspicion over him and affect his ability to gather news.

An offbeat 1975 article Miller wrote for Crawdaddy about the Kennedy Assassination was read by a literary agent who insisted it could be expanded into a full-length book.

For approximately six years (1979-1985) Miller worked as a stringer for the National Desk of the New York Times, filing stories on conflict and culture in the Southwest borderlands.

[5] Miller conceived and edited the book How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life, published simultaneously in Spanish in 2007.

[7] He has served as adjunct research associate at the University of Arizona's Latin American Area Center since 1990,[8] and resides in Tucson with his wife, Regla Albarrán.

In 2008 the City of Quito, at a public ceremony in its Centro Historico, proclaimed Miller "Un Huésped Ilustre" (An Illustrious Guest) for his literary contributions to Ecuador.

In 2016, the Cultural Ministry of Mexico selected Revenge of the Saguaro: Portraits of America's Southwestern Frontier to be translated into Spanish by the Trilce Publishing Company.

In addition to leading land-based study tours of Cuba, in 2017 Miller was the on-board lecturer on the Sea Mist, a 200 passenger cruise ship that circumnavigated the island, stopping at various port cities during the ten day journey.

The best of the genre can simply be an elegant natural history essay, a nicely writ sports piece, or a well-turned profile of a bar band and its music.