Simon Winchester has written works based on his travels through Africa, India and Hong Kong, including The River at the Center of the World (1996), about his trip along the Yangtze River. He has also written The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Alice Behind Wonderland and served as the Asia-Pacific editor for Conde Nast Traveler. He lives in Massachusetts and in the Western Isles of Scotland. His title The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2013.