Nathaniel Philbrick Books in Order

Philbrick retraces George Washington's early presidential tours, driving the same roads with his wife and their dog while weaving together travel memoir, biography, and history to ask what Washington meant then and what his legacy looks like now.

Focusing on the final years of the Revolutionary War, this book shows how George Washington and the French navy combined land campaigns, risky sea battles, and political gambles to trap the British at Yorktown and win American independence.

In this illustrated history for young readers, Boston schoolboy Benjamin Russell watches tensions with Britain explode, becomes a clerk to General Israel Putnam, witnesses the Battle of Bunker Hill, and later helps report the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Philbrick follows the intertwined fortunes of George Washington and Benedict Arnold, from early battlefield heroics to Arnold's attempted betrayal of West Point, revealing a revolutionary era plagued by rivalries, near civil war, and fragile loyalty on both sides.

In this brief selection from Mayflower, Philbrick revisits the 1621 harvest feast and the decades around it, unpacking the uneasy alliance between Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag peoples and showing how memory turned a conflicted past into a comforting holiday story.

This narrative history of Revolutionary Boston traces the road from the Boston Tea Party to the bloody Battle of Bunker Hill, focusing on figures like Joseph Warren, John Adams, and George Washington as a restless town turns into a revolutionary army.

In this slim companion to Melville's novel, Philbrick mixes close reading, literary history, and sea lore to explain why Moby-Dick still matters, offering practical guidance and infectious enthusiasm for readers who may be wary of tackling the classic.

Here Philbrick reconsiders the Battle of the Little Bighorn, portraying George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and their followers on both sides, and exploring how one spectacular victory for the Sioux and Cheyenne became a tragic turning point in the West.

Adapted for younger readers from Mayflower, this book follows the Pilgrims from Europe to Plymouth, through uneasy cooperation with Native neighbors and into King Philip's War, using maps and archival images to make a complex early American story accessible.

This anthology gathers key firsthand accounts behind Mayflower, including William Bradford's history of Plymouth and Benjamin Church's narrative of King Philip's War, giving readers direct access to the voices that shaped early New England.

Philbrick retells the Mayflower voyage and the first half century of Plymouth Colony, from the search for religious freedom to fragile alliances with the Wampanoags and the devastation of King Philip's War, showing how cooperation and conflict shaped New England.

Written for teens, this adaptation of In the Heart of the Sea follows the whaleship Essex after it is rammed by a sperm whale, tracing the young crew's desperate open-boat journey across the Pacific and the brutal choices they face to survive.

Sea of Glory recounts the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838 to 1842, a global voyage that mapped the Pacific, charted Antarctic coasts, and gathered scientific collections, while its domineering commander Charles Wilkes battled storms, mutiny scares, and a string of courts-martial.

This National Book Award winner tells the true story of the whaleship Essex, sunk by a furious sperm whale in 1820, and follows the stranded crew's three-month struggle in open boats, connecting their ordeal to the world that produced Moby-Dick.

In this memoir, Philbrick describes returning to competitive Sunfish racing in his thirties while living on Nantucket, using solo training sails, family road trips, and one high-stakes championship to reflect on ambition, aging, and why sailing still grips him.

Abram's Eyes uncovers the Native American history of Nantucket, tracing Wampanoag communities, legends, archaeological findings, and place-names to show how Indigenous people shaped the island long before it became a whaling port and fashionable vacation spot.

This sweeping history of Nantucket follows the island from its early English settlement through its rise as a whaling center and eventual decline, focusing on everyday men and women whose lives were tied to the sea, the land, and a tight-knit community.

Drawing on years on the racecourse and in small boats, this early book gathers Philbrick's writing on sailors, regattas, and seamanship, celebrating the skills, obsessions, and small joys that keep people chasing wind and water.