Hampton Sides

Hampton Sides is the author of Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound On His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, and other bestselling works of narrative history. His most recent book, On Desperate Ground, is a chronicle of the extraordinary feats of heroism by Marines called on to do the impossible during the greatest battle of the Korean War.

Sides’ talks, often accompanied by slideshows or multi-media presentations, enthrall audiences with the white-knuckle stories behind his epic books. He discusses his writing process and how he ties findings from obscure documents and his own exploration trips into his work. Sides’ discussions often focus on intriguing questions of leadership and ethics that arise in extremely difficult wilderness or battlefield situations—examining what qualities of training, attitude, and spirit cause some groups to prevail while others don’t.

Hampton is editor-at-large for Outside Magazine and has written for such periodicals as National Geographic, The New Yorker, Esquire, Preservation, and Men’s Journal. His magazine work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing.

Ghost Soldiers, a World War II narrative was the basis for the 2005 Miramax film, The Great Raid. Hampton’s Blood and Thunder, about the life and times of controversial frontiersman Kit Carson, was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2006 by Time magazine and is currently under development for the screen.

Hampton is a partner in Atalaya Productions, a Santa Fe-based independent production company that develops historical dramas and non-fiction projects for the screen. A native of Memphis and a Yale graduate, Hampton is an advisory board member of the Author’s Guild and a 2015 Miller Distinguished Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute. A frequent lecturer, he divides his time between Santa Fe and Colorado College, where he teaches narrative non-fiction and serves as Journalist-in-Residence.