A. Roger Ekirch Biography

Roger Ekirch is an award-winning author and a professor of history at Virginia Tech. His writing has been translated into eight languages. Although early America remain his teaching interest his research has ranged widely to include European as well as American history - even the history of sleep a more recent pursuit.
His latest book American Sanctuary: Mutiny Martyrdom and National Identity in the Age of Revolution was published in February 2017 by Pantheon an imprint of Alfred A. Knopf. A “Main Selection” of the History Book Club American Sanctuary opens in 1797 with the bloodiest mutiny ever suffered by Britain’s Royal Navy aboard the frigate Hermione in the Caribbean. Besides rocking the momentous American election of 1800 the powerful aftershocks of the Hermione crisis helped to shape the infant republic’s identity - how Americans envisioned both themselves and the nation’s destiny. It also led directly to the country’s historic decision to grant political asylum to refugees from foreign governments a major achievement in fulfilling the resonant promise of American independence voiced by Tom Paine to provide “an asylum for mankind.” “Ekirch’s brilliant reconstruction . . . is a triumph of historical research and analysis. American Sanctuary is one of the most important—and enjoyable—books I have read in many years” states Peter S. Onuf Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. The Wall Street Journal raved “Deeply researched and elegantly written . . . Gripping and timely . . . It isn’t often that a reviewer of a history book needs to avoid spoilers but Mr. Ekirch a professor of history at Virginia Tech is such a masterful storyteller that ‘American Sanctuary’ reads like a mystery.” A “dramatic tale” wrote the New York Times “in the mode of Nathaniel Philbrick’s nautical histories.”

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