Enrich Your Travels with Longitude
We've got the classic, new and hard-to-find books and maps to help you get the most out of your adventures.
THE BUSINESS
WHAT IS LONGITUDE?
Think of us as a bookstore organized geographically. We've got expert travel book and map recommendations for destinations worldwide, fine-tuned over the last ten years and including new and noteworthy, classic and hard-to-find items. Turn to Longitude whenever you travel! We draw on our network of travel partners, authors, friends and colleagues to bring you the best.
CONNECT
We’ve grown beyond bookselling with a popular monthly e-mail newsletter of new and noteworthy books, offers and reports from the field, a blog and, because it was inevitable and fun, a Facebook page. You’ll find favorite spots, recent trips, new books and other news from our world. We hope that you’ll chime in.
- Get a Catalog
- Subscribe to Longitude News (left hand of every page)
- Like us on Facebook
- E-mail Longitude
- Visit our store in New York City
- Call us at 800-342-2164
ESSENTIAL READING
Wondering what to read? We feature Essential Reading for hundreds of destinations, each a hand-picked set of four or five books and a map, all offered at a 15% discount including shipping. We favor well-written, concise books that capture the spirit of a place, including guidebooks, traveler’s tales, memoirs, histories, field guides and natural histories, along with fiction, many mysteries and books on art, architecture, food and language. Humor helps too.
We hope you find our selection of books informative, entertaining and useful — our reputation depends on it. Despite our best efforts, we might have forgotten to include your favorite book or somehow included a long-winded, boring book that's not worth the trouble. Please send your book recommendations, "thumbs up" or 'thumbs down" to Darrel at Longitude.
THE IDEA
What a better way to enrich the experience of travel? Our business is built around the notion of getting expert reading recommendations into the hands of travelers, partly so that Darrel could continue to work with the same great group of people, and also so that Daniel could try his hand at being an entrepreneur. We launched in 1999 with a few key destinations (Antarctica, East Africa, Galapagos and Costa Rica were the first four), and a handful of travel partners, including Travel Dynamics, the American Museum of Natural History and Quark Expeditions, where Darrel once worked. Smithsonian Journeys, Thomson Safaris, Lindblad and Tauck World Discovery were early important partners. Now all these years later — with thanks to the hundreds of resourceful, dynamic travel organizations that we count among our friends and partners — we cover the world.
COME VISIT
Yes, most of our business is over the web, though we also all answer the phone — and you are also more than welcome to come by and look at books (and us) in person at 115 West 30th Street, Suite 1206 in New York City. We’re up in a loft space around the corner from Penn Station. Drop by anytime during regular business hours, 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday. If you call first, we can make ourselves presentable and let you know what we have in stock for a particular destination. We enjoy visitors and so does the office cairn Kibo.
THE PEOPLE
CO-FOUNDERS
The owners and operators of Longitude are Darrel Schoeling and Daniel Kaizer, who after knowing each other for far too long finally decided to combine their talents and interests and start a business. Hence Longitude, a book service designed to help travelers get the most out of their adventures.
Darrel Schoeling. A 20-year veteran of adventure and educational travel, Darrel has organized and led tours to far-flung destinations from Antarctica (where he was expedition leader for seven seasons), to the North Pole, Baja California, the Galápagos Islands, Antarctica, Costa Rica, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, British Isles, French Polynesia, Kenya and Madagascar. He has worked with American Museum of Natural History Expeditions, Quark Expeditions, Micato Safaris and other tour companies since 1985. Darrel brings to Longitude a wealth of knowledge about the adventure travel industry, natural history, books, travelers and what they want.
Active in conservation issues, Darrel was a founding member and executive secretary of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators. He also participated in several Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings on the U.S. delegation, and has lectured widely on responsible tourism. A graduate of Brown University in biology (where he met Daniel lo these many years), Darrel previously taught at the Collegiate School in New York, and worked as chief naturalist guide on a tour vessel in the Galápagos, which is how all this got started.
Daniel Kaizer. An ecologist and former book editor, Daniel brings diverse business talents and rigor to Longitude. A graduate of Brown University, he holds a master's degree in ecology from Florida State University (where he was a National Science Foundation fellow), and an MBA with honors from Columbia. He was a Senior Associate at McKinsey & Company.
Before co-founding Longitude with Darrel, he was associate director at Victim Services, a 500-employee New York non-profit, board member and treasurer at Harlem United, an AIDS service organization, and helped launch the Management Assistance program at the Robin Hood Foundation. He’s currently president of the board of Transportation Alternatives. An avid reader and traveler, Daniel sometimes disappears to study Spanish abroad. He is a fan of Madrid.
Catherine Torphy. Originally from Rhode Island (her parents still live in the Ocean State) and a graduate of the MFA creative writing program at the University of Arizona, Longitude Editor Catherine has masterminded Longitude’s reading lists and partner relations since 2007. Previously an editor at Italian Cooking & Living, she’s especially savvy at all things Italian. A graduate of Colby, where she majored in English, Catherine has also lived in Bologna.
Daniel Petraitis. With his many, many years (who is counting) of experience as buyer and Manager in brick and mortar bookstores in NYC, Longitude fulfillment and customer service manager Daniel P. brings not only an obvious aplomb at handling orders, but also a welcome knowledge about many destinations — and what seems like just about every book on travel. Indeed it was Daniel's offhand familiarity with writers such as Colin McPhee, Eric Hansen, Heinrich Harrer, Eric Newby and the like that really won over our hearts here. Like Daniel P., like Daniel K. commutes to work by bike, raising our green quotient .
Kibo. Our longest serving employee, even if she is paid in treats, office cairn Kibo rarely misses a day at work, doing what dogs do best (sleep, wag her tail). After ten years coming to the office, she’s on a first name basis not only with Adriana the coffee lady (who gives her cheese) but also Edie from UPS, Adele the postman and Jamie from FedEx. Like Darrel, she often spends weekends in the woods upstate.
Longitude provides recommended reading for travelers in partnership with the leading tour operators and travel programs for hundreds of destinations worldwide. We've got the classic, new and hard-to-find books and maps to help you get the most out of your adventures.