Richard M. Ketchum has written eleven books, includingThe World of George Washington, Decisive Day: The Battle of Bunker Hill, andThe Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton.
As editor in charge of books at American Heritage Publishing Company for two decades, he edited many of that company's volumes, includingThe American Heritage Book of the RevolutionandThe American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation.
A graduate of Yale University, he commanded a subchaser in the South Atlantic during the Second World War, and was later director of overseas publications of the US Information Agency.
He and his wife live on a farm in Vermont - within an hour and a half's drive of many of the events described in the book - where they are active enivironmentalists.