Nathaniel Philbrick is an historian and broadcaster whose books include In the Heart of the Sea, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and won America's National Book Award (and is director Ron Howard's major new film), Sea of Glory (winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize), Mayflower, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the Sunday Times bestselling The Last Stand. He lives on Nantucket Island and is the founding director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association.
A notable merit of his account of the birth of the American revolution is its fairmindedness ... readable and sensible. -- Max Hastings SUNDAY TIMES Philbrick explores the complexities of pre-revolutionary New England in vivid, realistic and sometimes shocking colour ... [character] is certainly the animating spirit of this fine narrative history and, in a sprawling, vibrant cast, the character that emerges most forcefully is that of the city of Boston itself: tumultuous, vigorous and fascinating. -- Ben McIntyre THE TIMES Admirably even-handed ... this perceptive account. -- Andrew Roberts MAIL ON SUNDAY Brilliantly told. Philbrick is a master narrator who has deployed every ounce of his considerable skill in piercing the skin of revolutionary Boston to find the lifeblood of early America. THE TIMES A tightly focused and richly detailed narrative that just happens to resonate ... From the outset, Philbrick makes it clear that, unlike many other popular historians of the Revolution, he plans to be even-handed rather than merely glorofy the colonial rebels ... at his most vivid in conveying scenes of battle ... but what adds depth to the narrative is his fine sense of the ambitions that drive people in war and politics. WASHINGTON POST