Dean King is an award-winning author of ten nonfiction books. Dean relishes the adventures involved in making history come to life while at the same time diligently searching out the truth and turning up new historical detail. While researching his national bestseller Skeletons on the Zahara, he crossed the Sahara on camels and in Land Rovers. He trekked the Long March trail in the Snowy Mountains of Western China while researching Unbound and was shot at in Appalachia while writing The Feud. For his most recent book, Guardians of the Valley, Dean traveled to John Muir’s boyhood homes in Dunbar, Scotland, and rural Wisconsin and spent months roaming Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada.
The books that have resulted have been widely appreciated. The Daily Mail called Unbound, the story of the thirty women on Mao’s 4,000-mile Long March in 1934, “an astonishing and gripping tale of heroism and endurance.” The Wall Street Journal deemed The Feud “popular history the way it ought to be written,” and the Daily Telegraph called Dean’s groundbreaking biography Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed “a model of how these things should be: skeptical, generous and almost as well informed as the master himself.”
Dean’s writing has also appeared in the Daily Telegraph, Granta, Garden & Gun, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, Travel + Leisure, New York, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Virginia Living. He is a partner in Gum Street Productions, making documentary films.
Dean has trekked the entire Welsh border, walked across England twice, sailed from New York to Bermuda on the tall ship Rose, and traveled many continents and countries seeking history and adventure. His intellect, humor, and experience make him a masterful storyteller. He is the chief narrator in two History Channel documentaries and is a producer of its nonfiction series Hatfields & McCoys: White Lightning, which aired in sixteen episodes in 2013. Dean has appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, ABC World News Tonight, Genealogy Roadshow, American Experience, American Heroes Network, BBC Radio, and TEDx. You can also hear him on Wondery and Wicked Words podcasts. He speaks on his writings, his explorations, and the vital lessons learned from some of history’s most epic journeys. He is represented by Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau.