Author Guide · Immersion Journalism
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In 1997 the American journalist Ted Conover, born in 1958, went through the New York State correction officers’ academy and then worked as a guard at Sing Sing, after officials had refused to let him follow a recruit as a reporter. It was the same thing he had done since college: ride freight trains with hoboes for an anthropology thesis at Amherst, cross the Mexican border with migrants, drive a cab in Aspen, and later buy a plot of land among the off-gridders of Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Each book comes out of months spent doing the job or living the life he describes. This guide covers his seven key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 1984–2022 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Ted Conover has written seven books. The best known is Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2000), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the others include Rolling Nowhere (1984), Coyotes (1987), The Routes of Man (2010) and Cheap Land Colorado (2022). Start with Newjack, then read on for the order of the rest and which book fits which interest.
Where to Start with Ted Conover
If you want his defining book
→ Newjack (2000) — ten months as a guard inside a maximum-security prison.
If you want where it all began
→ Rolling Nowhere (1984) — freight trains and hobo camps, from his student years.
If you want America now
→ Cheap Land Colorado (2022) — the off-gridders of Colorado’s San Luis Valley.
If you want the method itself
→ Immersion (2016) — his own guide to immersion reporting.
7 Ted Conover Books, in Order
Rolling Nowhere
As an anthropology student at Amherst College, Conover spent about four months riding freight trains across the American West with hoboes, sleeping in their camps and learning their rules. The trip became his undergraduate thesis and then this book, published by Viking in 1984, his first.
Coyotes
Conover travelled with Mexican migrants across the border into the United States and back, worked beside them picking oranges, and followed them home to their villages. During the research he was arrested by Mexico’s judicial police. Later editions carry the subtitle A Journey Across Borders with America’s Mexican Migrants.
Whiteout
Conover moved to Aspen in the late 1980s and drove a taxi, a job that put him in the cars of celebrities and of the town’s workers alike, before joining The Aspen Times. The book mixes those encounters, including Hunter S. Thompson and John Denver, with the town’s history and the death of a skier in an avalanche.
Newjack
When New York officials refused to let him follow a recruit through training, Conover applied for the job himself, went through the academy in 1997 and spent about ten months as a new correction officer, a “newjack”, at Sing Sing. The book follows his own change on the job, alongside the history of the prison. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize.
The Routes of Man
Six journeys along six roads: a mahogany route in Peru, a frozen-river trail in Ladakh in northern India, the truck routes of East Africa, roads and checkpoints in the West Bank, a new highway in China and the traffic of Lagos, Nigeria. Each shows what a road brings to the people along it, from trade to disease to control. Later paperback editions are subtitled Travels in the Paved World.
Immersion
A short guide, published by the University of Chicago Press in its series on writing, to reporting by taking part: how to get access, when to tell people you are a writer, how to take notes on the job and what immersion costs the writer and the subjects. It draws on his own books and on those of other immersion writers.
Cheap Land Colorado
From 2017 Conover volunteered with La Puente, a rural outreach group in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and over several years split his time between New York and the valley, where he eventually bought land of his own. The book portrays the people living off the grid on the cheap prairie lots: some drawn by low prices or legal marijuana, some running from the past, some strongly anti-government.
In What Order to Read Ted Conover
None of his books continues from another, so you can read in any order. Publication order shows the method maturing: the young traveller of Rolling Nowhere and Coyotes, the full-time employee of Newjack, and the neighbour and landowner of Cheap Land Colorado.
Read Immersion after at least one of the reporting books, so the examples it gives from his own work mean something.
A reading path
1. Newjack (2000)
2. Rolling Nowhere (1984)
3. Coyotes (1987)
4. Cheap Land Colorado (2022)
5. Immersion (2016)
The years · 1958–2022
Quick facts about Ted Conover
- Known for
- Immersion journalism: reporting by taking a job or a life himself, most famously as a correction officer at Sing Sing for Newjack
- 1958
- Born in Okinawa, Japan; grows up in Denver
- 1984
- Rolling Nowhere
- 1991
- Whiteout
- 2000
- Newjack
- Born
- 1958, Okinawa, Japan; grew up in Denver, Colorado
- Education
- Amherst College (anthropology), then Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar
- Method
- Taking the job or the life: hobo, migrant, cab driver, prison guard
- Honours
- National Book Critics Circle Award for Newjack; Pulitzer finalist; Guggenheim Fellowship
- Teaching
- Professor emeritus of journalism at New York University
- Latest book
- Cheap Land Colorado (2022)
The red mark is 2000: Newjack, his book about working as a guard at Sing Sing.
How Ted Conover Writes: Taking the Job
Conover does not interview from outside; he takes the role. For Newjack he applied to the New York prison service in 1994, entered the academy in 1997 and worked under his own name, without telling colleagues he was writing a book. For Whiteout he drove a taxi; for Coyotes he picked oranges beside the men he was writing about.
He writes in the first person, but the subject is rarely himself. His training was in anthropology, and the books read like participant observation: the rules, slang and hierarchies of a closed world, learned by living in it, then checked against the history of the place. The Routes of Man and Cheap Land Colorado add reporting and history to the personal journey.
The method raises questions he takes on directly in Immersion: when to disclose, what you owe the people you live among, and how a role changes the writer. For writers who report the same way, from George Orwell to Barbara Ehrenreich, see Authors like Ted Conover.
Watch
Going to extremes to get the story
Conover talks about reporting Cheap Land Colorado among the off-gridders of the San Luis Valley at an Aspen Journalism author event in early 2023.
Frequently asked questions about Ted Conover’s books
How many books has Ted Conover written?
Seven: Rolling Nowhere (1984), Coyotes (1987), Whiteout (1991), Newjack (2000), The Routes of Man (2010), Immersion (2016) and Cheap Land Colorado (2022).
What are Ted Conover’s books in order?
Rolling Nowhere (1984), Coyotes (1987), Whiteout: Lost in Aspen (1991), Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2000), The Routes of Man (2010), Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep (2016) and Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America’s Edge (2022).
Where should I start with Ted Conover?
Newjack (2000). It is his best-known and most honoured book, and shows his method at its most sustained. If you prefer travel, start with Rolling Nowhere.
What is Ted Conover’s most famous book?
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2000), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize.
Did Ted Conover really work as a prison guard?
Yes. After New York officials refused to let him follow a recruit through training as a reporter, he applied for the job, went through the academy in 1997 and worked about ten months as a correction officer at Sing Sing.
Was Rolling Nowhere written while he was a student?
The journey was. Conover rode the freight trains for about four months as an anthropology student at Amherst, and the trip became his thesis. The book followed in 1984, after he graduated.
What is Cheap Land Colorado about?
The people who live off the grid on cheap land in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Conover started volunteering there with the outreach group La Puente in 2017, spent several years going back and forth from New York, and bought land of his own.
What is immersion journalism?
Reporting by taking part in the life you write about over a long period, instead of interviewing from outside. Conover’s book Immersion (2016) is his guide to doing it, including the ethics of when to reveal you are a writer.
Is Ted Conover still alive?
Yes. He was born in 1958 and is a professor emeritus of journalism at New York University. His most recent book is Cheap Land Colorado (2022).
Footnotes
- Ted Conover — NYU Journalism
- PW interview: In the belly of the beast — Publishers Weekly, 2000
- The Routes of Man — Christian Science Monitor, 2010
- Cheap Land Colorado — Kirkus Reviews
- Whiteout — Kirkus Reviews
- Going to extremes to get the story — Aspen Journalism, 2023
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“We all understand that it’s good to have advantages. But privilege can put blinders on you.”
— Ted Conover, interview with Publishers Weekly (2000)
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