Author

As well as the four books below, Roz has also written for numerous magazines and websites including Virgin.com, Forbes and the Huffington Post, and contributed to over a dozen books on oceans, conservation, adventure, personal development, and women. She has been blogging since 2003, getting close to two thousand posts; you can explore her archive via the Blog tab.

THE OCEAN IN A DROP: NAVIGATING FROM CRISIS TO CONSCIOUSNESS (2022)

The bad news is that our civilisation is collapsing. The good news is that you are already helping create a new and better one.

The Ocean in a Drop follows the quest of Roz Savage, a frustrated environmentalist and ocean adventurer, to find out why her own endeavours and the environmental movement more generally have failed to achieve change at the necessary scope, scale and speed. Her journey takes her from the environment through economics and politics into patriarchy and a global culture of domination – the domination of rich over poor, strong over weak, humanity over nature.

She examines the tragic psychological flaws in the way we think, and the apparent inevitability of civilizational collapse, and deduces that our best hope is to transcend the current trap of runaway materialism. But how?

Exploring cutting-edge theories on the nature of reality and the relationship between matter and consciousness, she peels back the veils of our shared delusions to arrive at a new narrative about what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. She paints a bold, exciting vision of a future in which people and planet thrive.

"Candid, thought-provoking and visionary." -- Clare Balding, TV and radio presenter and author

"Roz is a born storyteller. This is a haunting, moral, knee-buckling compilation of how humans have utterly lost their way, an astounding deconstruction of homo moderna, a unique species that has learned to destroy its home. In sixteen chapters, she rows across the ocean of our fading planet. When her story finally hits sacred land, the reader will never be the same. I will read it twice." -- Paul Hawken, author of Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation

“The earth is ailing. What is the diagnosis, and where is the cure? Roz Savage is dauntless in her quest for answers. An Enlightenment intellectual, she pursues a diagnosis based on reason, and on sciences varying from politics and economics to cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary biology, all the while knowing that if reason is consistent then it must be incomplete. A compassionate human, she inspires us to embrace our innate intelligence that transcends the limits of reason, and follow its guidance to unexpected remedies. If we heed her prescription, our prognosis is bright.” -- Don Hoffman, author of The Case Against Reality

THE GIFTS OF SOLITUDE: A SHORT GUIDE TO SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN ISOLATION (2020)

Roz Savage knows all about self-isolation. The most prolific female ocean rower in history, she has rowed – solo – across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, spending over five hundred days and nights alone at sea, often many hundreds of miles from the nearest human being.

Inspired by the coronavirus lockdown, Roz offers her hard-won wisdom to all who are feeling lonely or afraid during times of solitude. Based on her own struggles and breakthroughs at sea, along with tales of other individuals who have sought out or researched the impacts of loneliness, this book gives simple, practical, often humorous coping strategies for dealing with fear, helplessness, disorientation and self-doubt. When you can’t change your circumstances, you have to change your perspective.

With an attitude of acceptance and curiosity, you can learn not only to survive aloneness, but to thrive in it. Solitude offers unparalleled opportunities for self-awareness, personal growth, and purpose-finding that will stand you in good stead, no matter what the future may hold.

STOP DRIFTING, START ROWING: ONE WOMAN'S SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS AND MEANING ALONE ON THE PACIFIC (2013)

In the year 2000, Roz Savage seemed to have it all. But she felt there was a mismatch between the person she was pretending to be on the outside, and the person she wanted to be on the inside. Leaving behind her life as a London professional, she set out to row across the world's oceans. Her goal was to raise awareness of the heavy toll that human beings are taking on the Earth – and how it will rebound on us if we don't change course.

Stop Drifting, Start Rowing tells the story of Roz's record-setting solo row across the Pacific Ocean. In the course of her three-stage voyage, Roz braved 20-foot waves, was capsized 3 times in 24 hours, faced death by dehydration, encountered whales, dolphins, sharks and turtles, and witnessed the breathtaking beauty of nature. The ocean forced her to develop courage, tenacity, perseverance, and the strength to transcend self-imposed limits.

Not only is her story an amazing adventure tale, but it is a timely message of hope and optimism for the future, emphasizing the power of individual action to make a difference.

ROWING THE ATLANTIC: LESSONS LEARNED ON THE OPEN OCEAN (2009)

Stuck in a corporate job rut and faced with an unraveling marriage at the age of thirty-six, Roz Savage sat down one night and wrote two versions of her own obituary -- the one that she wanted and the one she was heading for. They were very different. She realized that if she carried on as she was, she wasn't going to end up with the life she wanted. So she turned her back on an eleven-year career as a management consultant to reinvent herself as a woman of adventure. She invested her life's savings in an ocean rowboat and became the first solo woman ever to enter the Atlantic Rowing Race.

Her 3,000-mile trial by sea became the challenge of a lifetime. Of the twenty-six crews that set out from La Gomera, six capsized or sank and didn't make it to the finish line in Antigua. There were times when she thought she had hit her absolute limit, but alone in the middle of the ocean, she had no choice but to find the strength to carry on.

In Rowing the Atlantic we are brought on board when Savage's dreams of feasts are nourished by yet another freeze-dried meal. When her gloves wear through to her blistered hands. When her headlamp is the only light on a pitch-black night ocean that extends indefinitely in all directions. When, one by one, all four of her oars break. When her satellite communication fails.

Stroke by stroke, Savage discovers there is so much more to life than a fancy sports car and a power-suit job. Flashing back to key moments from her life before rowing, she describes the bolt from the blue that first inspired her to row across oceans and how this crazy idea evolved from a dream into a tendinitis-inducing reality. And finally, Savage discovers in the rough waters of the Atlantic the kind of happiness we all hope to find.

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