Scott Shane was a reporter for 15 years at The New York Times, where he was twice a member of teams that won Pulitzer Prizes, and before that for 21 years at The Baltimore Sun. His new book, FLEE NORTH: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland, weaves together the stories of three people: Thomas Smallwood, who bought his freedom, helped hundreds of people escape slavery, and named the underground railroad; Smallwood's white sidekick, Charles Torrey; and the leading slave trader of the 1840s, Hope Slatter. His two previous books are OBJECTIVE TROY: A Terrorist, A President, and the Rise of the Drone, the story of an American terrorist killed in a drone strike on orders of President Obama; and DISMANTLING UTOPIA: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, a firsthand account of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2019-2020 he was a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught courses on media and on the Russian attack on the 2016 American presidential election. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, Francie Weeks, who taught English to foreign students for 30 years. They have three children.
