Hampton Sides

Hampton Sides
Born 1962
Memphis, Tennessee, United States
Occupation Historian/Author/Journalist
Nationality American
Education BA
Alma mater Yale
Period 2001–present
Genre Non-Fiction, History, American History
Notable works Americana
Blood and Thunder
Ghost Soldiers
Hellhound on his Trail
In the Kingdom of Ice
Spouse Anne Goodwin
Children 3 sons

Hampton Sides (born 1962) is an American historian, author and journalist. He is the author of Americana, Hellhound on His Trail, Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, and other bestselling works of narrative history and literary non-fiction.

Sides is editor-at-large for Outside magazine and has written for such periodicals as National Geographic, The New Yorker, Esquire, Men's Journal, and The Washington Post. His magazine work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing.

Appearances

A native of Memphis, Sides attended Memphis University School and graduated from Yale with a BA in history. Sides lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife Anne Goodwin Sides, a journalist and former NPR editor, and their three boys, all soccer players. He is a past fellow of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Japan Society, and an Edwards Media Fellow at Stanford University. He is an advisory board member of the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. Sides has guest-lectured at Columbia, Yale, Stanford, SMU, Colorado College, the Autry National Center of the American West, the American Embassy in Manila, Rehoboth Christian School, and the National World War II Museum, among other venues and institutions. He has appeared as a guest on such national broadcasts as American Experience, the Today show, Book TV, the History Channel, Fresh Air, CNN, CBS Sunday Morning, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Colbert Report, Imus in the Morning, and NPR's All Things Considered.

Books

Ghost Soldiers (Doubleday, 2001), a World War II narrative about the rescue of Bataan Death March survivors, has sold slightly over a million copies worldwide and has been translated into a dozen foreign languages. Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City, praised Ghost Soldiers as a "Great Escape for the Pacific Theater," and Esquire called it "the greatest World War II story never told." The book was the subject of documentaries on PBS and The History Channel, and was partially the basis for the 2005 Miramax film, The Great Raid (along with William Breuer's The Great Raid on Cabanatuan). Ghost Soldiers won the 2002 PEN USA Award for non-fiction and the Discover Award from Barnes & Noble. The book's success led Sides to create The Ghost Soldiers Endowment Fund, a non-profit foundation dedicated to preserving the memory of the sacrifices made by Bataan and Corregidor veterans by funding relevant archives, museums, and memorials.

Blood and Thunder (Doubleday, 2006) focuses on the life and times of controversial frontiersman Kit Carson, and his role in the conquest of the American West. A critic for the Los Angeles Times described Blood and Thunder as "stunning, haunting, and lyrical," while The Washington Post called it "riveting, monumental...authoritative and masterfully told." Blood and Thunder was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2006 by Time Magazine, and was selected as that year's best history title by the History Book Club and the Western Writers of America. Blood and Thunder was the subject of a major documentary on the PBS program American Experience and is currently under development for the screen.

Hellhound on His Trail (Doubleday 2010) is about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the largest manhunt in American history to capture James Earl Ray, who pled guilty in 1969 and served the rest of his life in prison. Sides, who is a native of Memphis, is the first historian to make use of a new digital archive in that city, called the B. Venson Hughes Collection, which contains more than 20,000 documents and photos, many of them rare or never before published. Sides’ research forms much of the basis for PBS’s documentary "Roads to Memphis", which originally aired May 3, 2010, on the award-winning program, American Experience.

Hellhound on His Trail reached #6 on The New York Times Best Seller list. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the book "spellbinding...bold, dynamic, unusually vivid," while a reviewer in The New York Times Book Review suggested that Hellhound "may be the first book on King that owes less to Taylor Branch than Robert Ludlum." Time Magazine said Hellhound "unfolds like a mystery—one read not for the ending but for all the missteps and near misses along the way." Critic Laura Miller, writing on Salon.com, described Hellhound as a "meticulous yet driving account that is in essence a true-crime story and a splendid specimen of the genre." David Garrow, author of a Pulitzer-winning biography of King, wrote in The Washington Post that Hellhound was "a carefully constructed true-crime narrative" and "a memorable and persuasive portrait" that "makes a valuable contribution to the historical record."

Hellhound on His Trail has been optioned by Universal Studios and is now said to be under development, with a screenplay reportedly written by Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden.

Future Works

As of 2015, Hampton Sides is working on a book for Doubleday about 1950, the early days of the Cold War, and the harrowing, heroic Korean War Battle of Chosin Reservoir.

Selected Journalism

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ "Erik Larson’s ‘Dead Wake,’ About the Lusitania". The New York Times Book Review, Sides, Hampton. March 5, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  2. ↑ "Science Seeks to Unlock Marijuana’s Secrets". National Geographic; Sides, Hampton. June 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  3. ↑ "Unseen Titanic". National Geographic; Sides, Hampton. April 2012. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Russian Refuge". National Geographic; Sides, Hampton. May 2013. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  5. ↑ "1,000 days in the Ice". National Geographic; Sides, Hampton. January 2009. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Tracing the Steps of Lost Explorers in Miserable, Beautiful Siberia". Outside; Sides, Hampton. July 8, 2014. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  7. ↑ "The Man Who Saw Too Much". Outside; Sides, Hampton. December 27, 2010. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  8. ↑ "Bear Grylls Plays Dirty". Outside; Sides Hampton. April 20, 2010. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Anyone for a Dip?". Outside; Sides, Hampton. October 1, 2007. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  10. ↑ "The Birdman Drops In". Outside; Sides, Hampton. January 10, 2002. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Wake-Up Call: Surviving an Attack by Flesh-Eating Bacteria". Outside; Sides, Hampton. September 18, 2013. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  12. ↑ "Quadzilla". Outside; Sides, Hampton. January 4, 2012. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  13. ↑ "The Place Where Two Fell Off". Outside; Sides, Hampton. October 2, 2006. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  14. ↑ "The First to Die". Men's Journal; Sides, Hampton. October 2003. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  15. ↑ "Life's Rich Pageant". Bicycling; Sides, Hampton. June 20, 2012. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  16. ↑ "Decades after assassinations, Memphis and Dallas remain hostages of history, says Hampton Sides". The Dallas Morning News; Sides, Hampton. April 4, 2010. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  17. ↑ "Frozen Assets". The American Scholar; Sides, Hampton. June 3, 2011. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  18. ↑ "The Fall of Greg Mortensen and Our Longing for Heroes". Newsweek; Sides, Hampton. April 24, 2011. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  19. ↑ "National Defense". The New Yorker; Sides, Hampton. June 7, 2010. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  20. ↑ "City Portrait: Memphis Tennessee". Garden & Gun; Sides, Hampton. May 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  21. ↑ N. Scott Momaday (October 29, 2006). "Cowboys and Indians". The New York Times. “Blood and Thunder” is a full-blown history, and Sides does every part of it justice... By telling this story, Sides fills a conspicuous void in the history of the American West.
  22. ↑ Hector Tobar (August 1, 2014). Review: 'Kingdom of Ice' uncovers a polar adventure frozen in time. The Los Angeles Times. Sides' book is a masterful work of history and storytelling, and it rewards patient readers with scenes of human strength and frailty they will long remember.
  23. ↑ Gary Krist (August 1, 2014). "Book review: "In the Kingdom of Ice," polar voyage of USS Jeannette, by Hampton Sides". The Washington Post. Thanks to Sides’s copious mining of primary and first-person sources — including memoirs, official Navy documents, and De Long’s journals and private correspondence — readers get to experience at close range the Jeannette crew’s trek across the melting ice, this “sorry-looking set” in ignominious retreat from a nonexistent warm-water sea.
  24. ↑ Howard Schneider (August 1, 2014). "Book Review: 'In the Kingdom of Ice' by Hampton Sides". The Wall Street Journal.

External links

External media
Audio
In 1879, Explorers Set Sail To Solve Arctic Mystery, Once And For All, NPR, August 02, 2014
Hampton Sides: “In the Kingdom of Ice”, Diane Rehm Show, Aug 14 2014
Interview with NPR's Fresh Air, 10-28
Video
Booknotes interview with Sides on Ghost Soldiers, September 30, 2001.
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