Photograph by Reza
Photograph by Reza
A journalist and former Senior Editor for National Geographic, Don Belt has lived, on assignment, with Bedouin in Jordan, truckers in India, tribesmen in Pakistan, sailors in Siberia, and flea-bitten fishermen on the west coast of Mexico. It’s all in a day’s work for an award-winning author who’s traveled to 50 countries over the past two decades reporting on the peoples and places of the world.
As a senior editor of the magazine from 1999 to 2010, Don helped to shape National Geographic‘s coverage of topics including weapons of mass destruction, Islam and the West, the making of the modern Middle East, and the life of Lawrence of Arabia. His most recent article sheds light on the people of Bangladesh, confronting and adapting to rising sea levels. But whatever the assignment, Don’s specialty is connecting with ordinary people in the far-flung corners of the world, and celebrating both the diversity of human experience and the things we have in common.
Drawing on his past lives as a poet, carpenter, ambulance driver, and soccer player—as well as his experience as a journalist—Don has lectured on Middle Eastern geography and politics at George Washington University, addressed the World Presidents Organization, briefed the U.S. Congress on Pakistan, and taught the craft of non-fiction writing at the Poynter Institute’s annual National Writers Workshop. A dynamic and thoughtful presenter, Don has also appeared on CNN, PBS, NPR, and newscasts around the U.S. and the world.
Listen to Radio Interview With Don Belt
Boyd Matson Interviews Don for NG Weekend Radio Show
An influx of nomads has turned the Mongolian capital upside down.
The people of Bangladesh have much to teach us about how a crowded planet can best adapt to rising sea levels. For them, that future is now.
A source of conflict between Israel and its neighbors for decades, the Jordan River is now depleted by drought, pollution, and overuse. Could the fight to save it forge a path toward peace?
Poised to play a pivotal new role in the Middle East, Syria struggles to escape its dark past.
Followers of Jesus for nearly 2,000 years, native Christians today are disappearing from the land where their faith was born.
A new superhighway linking its four major cities is bringing old and new India into jarring proximity.
Sixty years after its founding as a homeland for India’s Muslims, Pakistan straddles the fault line between moderate and militant Islam.
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