Rinker Buck

Charles Rinker Buck (born December 29, 1950) is an American journalist and author of non-fiction books. He was awarded the 2016 PEN New England Award in the non-fiction category for his 2015 book The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey

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Quotes

... Childers had been an exemplary, even remarkable Marine. After enlisting in the U.S. Marines fresh out of high school in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1990, Childers had scored high marks at boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, and then at a Light Armored Driver's course in California. Eight months after enlisting, Childers had briefly served in combat during the Persian Gulf War. After seasoning in a combat platoon at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Childers had been selected for a particularly coveted duty, marine security guard service at foreign embassies, and eventually had been stationed at embassies and consulates in Geneva; Paris; and Nairobi, Kenya. In a variety of disciplines—platoon tactics, light armored reconnaissance, guard command, and especially physical fitness—Childers had consistently achieved the highest training and personal evaluations, and scored average in only one area, marksmanship.
- Shane Comes Home. Harper Collins. 2009. p. 9. ISBN 9780061873676. (320 pages; 1st edition 2005)

I am an obsessive-compulsive reader and a history junkie. I brake by rote at every historical marker, I buy out museum bookstores, and for years my interest in colonial forts and Shaker villages so exhausted my two children that they are now permanently allergic to the past. I can tell you, right down to the hour, everything that happened at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the first week of July 1863, and each setback that Franklin Roosevelt endured during World War II feels like it happened to me.
- The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. Simon and Schuster. 2015. p. 5. ISBN 9781451659160. (450 pages)

I didn't spend a year building a wooden flatboat and then sailing it two thousand miles down the Mississippi to New Orleans simply because I was suffering from a Huck Finn complex although that certainly played a part. It was hot that spring on the Tennessee farm where we built the boat and I often relieved the tedium of nailing on deck planking or raising roof stringers by daydreaming about spinning lazily down through the muddy boils, exploring remote islands and sandbars, or pulling off at sunset into bayous thick with cattails and cypress stumps. Mostly, though, I was entranced by history. I hungered to see that river country when I stumbled across an account of one of the first boatmen who braved the water route that America followed toward prosperity and greatness.
- Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure. Simon & Schuster. 2023. p. 1. ISBN 9781501106385. (416 pages)