Nathaniel Philbrick

In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, the unthinkable happened: in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided instead to sail their three tiny boats for the distant South American coast. They would eventually travel over 4,500 miles. The next three...

From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as author Philbrick reveals, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a 55-year epic. The Mayflower's religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period of crisis for Native Americans, as disease spread...

"The American Revolution may have been started by a group of citizen-soldiers on a green in Lexington, Massachusetts, but it was won on a choppy patch of water off Chesapeake Bay. In Bunker Hill and Valiant Ambition, Nathaniel Philbrick gave us a new and provocative way of looking at the war that created the United States. His latest book is the capstone of that enterprise, focusing on the last year of the war, and is the culmination of Philbrick's...

"Does George Washington still matter? The bestselling author argues for his unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new President through the former colonies, now an unsure nation. A new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and personal reflection into one narrative. When George Washington became president in 1798, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative...

Shares expert guidelines on how to read and appreciate Herman Melville's classic work, offering insight into its history, characters, and themes while explaining its literary relevance in the modern world.

After a perilous journey across the Atlantic, the Mayflower's passengers were saved from certain destruction with the help of the Natives of the Plymouth region. For fifty years a fragile peace was maintained as Pilgrims and Natives learned to work together. But that trust was broken with the next generation of leaders, and a conflict erupted that nearly wiped out English and natives alike.

A charming memoir of midlife by the bestselling author of Mayflower and In the Hurricane's Eye, recounting his attempt to recapture a national sailing championship he'd won at twenty-two.
“There had been something elemental and all consuming about a Sunfish. Nothing could compare to the exhilaration of a close race in a real blow—the wind howling and spray flying as my Sunfish and I punched through the waves...