Robert A. Kurson (born April 18, 1963) is an American author. He is most famous for his 2004 best-selling book, Shadow Divers. The book tells the real-life story of two Americans who found a World War II German U-boat that was sunk 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey.

Career

Kurson began his career as a lawyer. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1990 and worked in real estate law. Kurson’s writing career started at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he worked as a sports agate clerk and later became a full-time features writer. In 2000, Esquire published his first magazine story, "My Favorite Teacher," which was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He later worked at Chicago magazine and then at Esquire magazine, where he was a contributing editor. His stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

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 trying to identify a World War II German U-boat. The book tells the story of the effort to learn the identity of the mysterious wreck, called "U-Who" by the dive team, the men aboard the ship, and how the ship ended up resting on the ocean floor near New Jersey.

Shadow Divers stayed on the New York Times Bestseller list for 24 weeks, reaching number 2. The book was featured in publications such as CBS News, TIME Magazine, NPR, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. The book is often compared to The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Shadow Divers won the American Booksellers Association’s 2005 "Book of the Year Award" and the American Library Association’s Alex Award. The book has been translated into 22 languages.

Kurson wrote the nonfiction book Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See, published in 2007. The book tells the story of Mike May, an 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.

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 (also featured in Shadow Divers) and John Mattera, as they search for the wreck of the 17th-century pirate ship Golden Fleece. The ship was stolen by its captain, Joseph Bannister, and later sank after a battle with two Royal Navy frigates. The book was a New York Times Bestseller.

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 describes the Apollo 8 mission, set against the events of 1968, a year marked by conflict and division in the United States. Rocket Men was a New York Times Bestseller, featured on The Today Show, and adapted for film and television. The Washington Post wrote, “Rocket Men is close-to-the-bone adventure-telling on a par with Alfred Lansing’s Endurance and Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. It’s as close to a movie as writing gets.”