Peter Stark

Peter Stark is an adventurer and historian. Born in Wisconsin, he attended Dartmouth College and took a master's in journalism at the University of Wisconsin. He set out to write adventure-travel articles about Greenland, Tibet, Africa, and elsewhere for magazines such as Outside, Smithsonian, The New York Times Magazine, and others. Based in Missoula, Montana, he now specializes in researching and writing historical accounts of early American explorers in wilderness settings and their contact with Indigenous peoples. His book Astoria, a New York Times bestseller in 2014 and finalist for a PEN USA literary award, told the epic story of the establishment of the first American colony on the West Coast, at the mouth of the Columbia River. His Young Washington (2018) was named a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. He has recently completed a book about the struggle for the lands of the Midwest between the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh and the frontier governor (and later president) William Henry Harrison. Titled Gallop Toward the Sun, it will be published by Random House August 29th.