Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fergus M. Bordewich, born on the 1st of November, 1947, is an American writer, popular historian, and editor based in San Francisco. He is the author of eight nonfiction books focused primarily on 18th and 19th century American history, including works on the Underground Railroad, the founding of Washington D.C., and the Civil War era Congress.
Bound for Canaan, published by Amistad/HarperCollins in 2005, is a history of the Underground Railroad subtitled "The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America." It was named one of the American Booksellers Association's ten best nonfiction books of 2005 and one of the New York Public Library's ten books to remember.
Before his writing career, Bordewich did voter registration for the NAACP in the segregated South in the late 1960s, worked as a roustabout in Alaska's Arctic oil fields, drove a taxi in New York City, and served as a deckhand on a Norwegian freighter. He also worked as an editor for the Tehran Journal in 1972-1973 and as an advisor to the New China News Agency in Beijing in 1982-1983.
America's Great Debate, published by Simon & Schuster in 2012, chronicles Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the political crisis that produced the Compromise of 1850. The Washington Post named it one of the Best Books of 2012, and publisher Donald E. Graham described it as original in concept and stylish in execution.
Bordewich's mother, LaVerne Madigan Bordewich, was the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, then the only independent advocacy organization for Native Americans. Traveling with her to Native American reservations across the United States shaped his lifelong focus on American history, the settlement of the continent, and issues of race and political power. He later wrote about her in his 2001 memoir, My Mother's Ghost.
Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, published by Knopf in 2023, is Bordewich's most recent book. It examines Grant's effort to defend Reconstruction against the Ku Klux Klan following the Civil War.