Hampton Sides
This native Memphian is perhaps best-known as the author of Ghost Soldiers, a nonfiction book about the rescue of the last survivors of the Bataan Death March from a Japanese prison camp during World War II. Published in 2001, the book remained on The New York Times best-seller list for 42 weeks. The Yale graduate started in journalism as a staff writer for Memphis magazine. He has been an editor-at-large for Outside magazine, a correspondent for NPR, and his work has been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, Men’s Journal, and elsewhere. Other best-selling books include Stomping Grounds: A Pilgrim’s Progress Through Eight American Subcultures (1992), American Dispatches from the New Frontier (2004), Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (2006), and In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette (2014). Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for his Assassin (2010) has been optioned by Black Label Media and is under development. Sides’ latest project is a book about the 1950s and the early days of the Cold War.
