Nathaniel Philbrick

Philbrick was Brown University’s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor in 1978, the same year he won the Sunfish North Americans in Barrington, Rhode Island.

Bunker Hill has been optioned by Warner Bros. for feature film adaptation with Ben Affleck attached to direct. In 2016, screenwriter Aaron Stockard (The Town, Gone Baby Gone) was signed to the project.

In the Heart of the Sea is the basis of the Warner Bros. motion picture of the same name, directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Ben Wishaw, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, and Tom Holland, released in December 2015. The book also inspired a 2001 Dateline special on NBC as well as the 2010 two-hour PBS American Experience film "Into the Deep" by Ric Burns.

In 1986, Philbrick moved to Nantucket with his wife Melissa and their two children. In 1994, he published his first book about the island’s history, Away Off Shore, followed in 1998 by a study of the Nantucket’s native legacy, Abram’s Eyes. He is the founding director of Nantucket’s Egan Maritime Institute and is a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association.

Nathaniel Philbrick (born June 11, 1956) is an American author of history, winner of the National Book Award, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His maritime history, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which tells the true story that inspired Melville's Moby-Dick, won the 2000 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was adapted as a film in 2015.

Nathaniel Philbrick was born on June 11, 1956, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Marianne (Dennis) and Thomas Philbrick, an English professor. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and has lived in Nantucket, Massachusetts since 1986.