Richard Bangs

Bangs' articles and essays have appeared in many places, including in The New York Times, Slate and The Huffington Post.[3] Bangs has authored 19 books. His book The Lost River: A Memoir of Life, Death and the Transformation of Wild Water won the National Outdoor Book Award in the literature category, and the Lowell Thomas Award for best book. Adventures with Purpose won the 2007 best book award from NATJA. Recent books are Quest for the Sublime (2008) and Quest for the Kasbah (2009).[4]

Bangs was founder and editor-in-chief of Mungo Park,[5] a pioneering Microsoft travel publishing effort. He also founded www.terra-quest.com. He was part of the founding executive team of Expedia.com, and served as its editor-at-large. He was creator and publisher of Expedia Travels Magazine (published in partnership with Ziff-Davis), and executive producer of Expedia Radio, and founder and executive director of Expedia Cafes. He founded the Well Traveled feature (Dispatches From The Front Lines of Travel) for Slate, and was founding editor and executive producer of Great Escapes at MSNBC.com. He also ran and founded First and Best for MSN, and in 2005 founded and headed up Richard Bangs Adventures for Yahoo! News.[6]

In 1981 Bangs was hired as a stuntman for the film, Killing at Hells Gate, where a whitewater rafting party is terrorised during a trip down the river. In 1991 Bangs executive produced River of the Red Ape. In 1997 Bangs executive produced The Last Wild River Ride,[7] a Turner Original Production about a team exploring Ethiopia's Tekeze River. In 2005 he co-directed the IMAX Film, Mystery of the Nile.[8] Mystery of the Nile tells the story of a team of explorers, led by Pasquale Scaturro and Gordon Brown, that spend 114 days making their way along all 3,260 miles of the river to become the first in history to complete a full descent of the Blue Nile from source to sea.

After the conclusion of the Richard Bangs Adventures series on Yahoo! News in 2006, Bangs launched a public TV series of specials known as Richard Bangs Adventures with Purpose all shot on location in Egypt, New Zealand, Switzerland, Morocco, Norway, India, Greece, Hong Kong, and Costa Rica. The goal of this series was to combine adventure with travel that makes a difference; travel that positively impacts the world. In 2012, Bangs launched "Richard Bangs Quests"; a White Nile Media, Inc. production. The pilot show, Richard Bangs South America: Quest for Wonder, was carried by KQED and American Public Television.