Nathaniel Philbrick

Nathaniel Philbrick is an American author of narrative history, much of it about the sea and early America. Born in Boston and raised in Pittsburgh, he studied English at Brown University, where he was a champion sailor, and earned a master's degree in American literature at Duke University. He worked as an editor at Sailing World before moving to Nantucket in 1986, where he became the founding director of the Egan Maritime Institute.

In the Heart of the Sea (2000), the story of the whaleship Essex, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He followed it with Sea of Glory (2003) and Mayflower (2006). His later books include The Last Stand (2010), Bunker Hill (2013), Valiant Ambition (2016), In the Hurricane's Eye (2018) and Travels with George (2021).

Philbrick lives on Nantucket, where he is a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association.