“Bob Bone is both widely traveled and keenly observant, someone who knew the Hawaiian islands when they were unspoiled, and was a friend to Hunter Thompson on the Proud Highway when he was maniacal - in short, a reliable witness.” — Paul Theroux, premier travel writer and novelist, author of The Great Railway Bazaar

“Bob Bone was one hell of a reporter-photographer when we worked together so long ago on the (San Juan) Star. Now he's summing up his life and he's got a mountain of great stuff to sum up. Arriba! Roberto.” — William J. Kennedy, author of Ironweed and other books

In 1968, future “gonzo journalist” Hunter S. Thompson predicted Bob Bone would write a book someday “on How to Beat the NY Big Salary-Death-in-Life Syndrome.”

This, at last, is that book.

Robert W. Bone has visited every continent and covered at least 75 countries. For four decades, thousands of travelers to Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand carried the latest editions of his prize-winning Maverick Guides or read his groundbreaking work on the “last frontier,” Fielding’s Alaska and the Yukon. He wrote travel articles for magazines, and using his personal syndication system, hundreds more for the travel sections of newspapers throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Thompson joined him on some of his early adventures in the U.S. and abroad, admiring Bone’s ability to live the kind of life that office drones dream of.

Put the formula down on paper, Thompson wrote him:
“Shit, you’d sell 50,000 copies in NY alone.”

Fire Bone! is an unvarnished memoir of thrilling experiences with newspapers, magazines and book publishers, and the childhood and youthful love affairs that led up to them.

Bone has been shot at and robbed. He’s battled American and foreign bureaucrats. But as his grandmother predicted, everything he did “would always come out for the best.”

He’s climbed to the top of a mast at sea and planted a revolutionary flag at a world’s fair. And he’s never been fired from a job. Fire Bone! explains all that, too.

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