Nathaniel Philbrick grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and earned a BA in English from Brown University and an MA in America Literature from Duke University, where he was a James B. Duke Fellow. He was Brown University’s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor in 1978, the same year he won the Sunfish North Americans in Barrington, Rhode Island. After working as an editor at
Sailing World magazine, he wrote and edited several books about sailing, including
The Passionate Sailor, Second Wind, and
Yaahting: A Parody.
In 2000, Philbrick published the
New York Times bestseller
In the Heart of the Sea, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction. The book is the basis of the Warner Bros. motion picture
Heart of the Sea, directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, Benjamin Walker, Ben Wishaw, and Tom Holland. The book also inspired a 2001 Dateline special on NBC as well as the 2010 two-hour PBS American Experience film
Into the Deep by Ric Burns.
Philbrick’s writing has appeared in
Vanity Fair,
The New York Times Book Review,
The Wall Street Journal, the
Los Angeles Times, and the
Boston Globe. He has appeared on the
Today show,
The Morning Show,
Dateline, PBS’s
American Experience, C-SPAN, and NPR. He and his wife live on Nantucket.
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