He directed and co-produced a documentary for Global Vision's Rights and Wrongs program^[2] which was a finalist in the Rory Peck Award for excellence in television journalism in 1996^[3][1][4]

Goltz has written news for most leading US publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. In-depth articles have appeared in Foreign Policy magazine, The National Interest, The Washington Quarterly and other broad-based magazines. In  electronic media, he has worked on or produced video documentaries on a variety of topics for ABC/Nightline, BBC/Correspondent and CBS/60 Minutes.^[5]

He became known mainly as a crisis correspondent due to coverage of the first war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Karabakh, the war of secession in Abkhazia from Georgia and the separatist conflict in Chechnya.^[1]

He spent time in Samashki, Chechnya before the massacre happened there. He made video reports about the massacre immediately afterwards. Goltz made a film out of them which was in mainstream in US, UK, and even in Russia.^[6]

On August 22, 2000, Goltz carried the symbolic “first barrel of oil” from Baku, Azerbaijan with IMZ sidecar motorcycle, to Ceyhan, Turkey with other 25 riders. They used to future Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline route at the time. The aim was to draw attention to this mega project which symbolizes both Azerbaijan's and Georgia's (country) economic independence.^[7][8]

He lectured at most leading US universities including Columbia, Georgetown, Berkeley, Northwestern, Princeton, etc and foreign policy-related institutes in Azerbaijan, Canada, Georgia, the United Kingdom and the United States.^[5] Other than that he was also professor in Montana State University.^[9] In 2020, he was awarded an honorary PhD by the ADA University.^[10]

Thomas Goltz was born in Japan and raised in North Dakota. He graduated from New York University with an MA in Middle East studies.^[1] He married to Hicran Oge in 1984 in Istanbul, Turkey.^[11] Goltz were able to fluently speak English, German, Turkish, and Azerbaijani. He knew some Arabic, Russian and Japanese too.^[1][12] He died on July 29, 2023, at the age of 68 after a long illness.^[13][14][11] Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev sent a condolences message to his family and described Goltz as "great friend of Azerbaijan".^[15]

The Armenian National Committee of Canada accused Goltz of racism in March 2009 for remarks made at a lecture allegedly sponsored by Assembly of Azerbaijani-Canadian Organizations. According to the Armenian National Committee, Goltz characterized the Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh as "garlic-growing Armenians", and selectively mentioned instances of ethnic cleansing by Armenians against Azerbaijanis while omitting mention of cases of ethnic cleansing of Armenians by Azerbaijanis.^{[16][17][unreliable fringe source?]}

• Requiem for a would-be republic (1994)^[18][19]
• Goltz, Thomas (1998). Azerbaijan Diary: A ROGUE REPORTER'S ADVENTURES IN AN OIL-RICH, WAR-TORN POST-SOVIET REPUBLIC. ISBN 076560244X.^[20]
• Oil Odyssey (2000)^{[8][21][22][23]}
• Chechnya Diary: A War Correspondent's Story of Surviving the War in Chechnya (2003) ISBN 0312268742^[24][25]
• Georgia Diary: A Chronicle of War and Political Chaos in the Post-Soviet Caucasus (2006) ISBN 0765617102^[26]
• Assassinating Shakespeare: Confessions of a Bard in the Bush (2006) ISBN 0863567185^[11]
• Türkiye Diary ('The Bridge'): Forty Years Of Intimate Association With A Wayward US Eurasian Ally (2020)^[27][28]
• Zakhrafa : Memories of a disappearing Middle East (2021)^[29][30]

• Thomas De Whaal