Lee Sandlin

Lee Sandlin (1956-2014) is the author of several books of lyrical American history. Wicked River is a narrative history of the Mississippi River before Mark Twain, “when it last ran wild.” Storm Kings describes the evolution of tornado science (and tornado chasing) from Benjamin Franklin to WWII. Lee’s masterpiece, The Distancers, chronicles the American Midwest of several generations as reflected in the “life story” of a single house. An award-winning journalist and essayist, he was a book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal and wrote feature journalism, historical studies and reviews for publications from USA Today to The American Scholar. His longer essays appeared in the Chicago Reader, where he was also for many years the TV critic. A segment of his essay “Losing the War” was featured on the NPR show This American Life and included by Ira Glass in his 2007 anthology, The New Kings of Nonfiction; it has been translated into Italian (“Perdere la Guerra” available in book form at amazon.it). A fourth-generation Chicagoan, Lee Sandlin has been called “a genius of Midwestern letters” and “a poet of fact.” Learn more about Lee, his work and his enthusiasms at LEESANDLIN.COM