Nathaniel Philbrick was born on June 11, 1956 in Boston Massachusetts. Philbrick graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, earned his bachelor's degree in English at Brown University, and his master's degree in American literature at Duke University. Philbrick was Brown�s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor in 1978; that year he won the Sunfish North Americans in Barrington, Rhode Island. After graduate school, Philbrick worked for four years at Sailing World magazine; was a freelancer for a number of years, during which time he wrote/edited several sailing books, including Yaahting: A Parody, for which he was the editor-in-chief. After moving to… Nantucket in 1986, he became interested in the history of the island and wrote Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People. He was offered the opportunity to start the Egan Maritime Institute in 1995. In 2000 he published In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. This was followed by Sea of Glory: America�s Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, in 2003. In 2006, Philbrick published a new history of the founding of the Plymouth colony in the United States, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn was published in May 2010. His book, Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution about Boston during the early years of the Revolution was published on April 30, 2013. Bunker Hill made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2013.