Colin Woodard, a New York Times bestselling author and historian, is the state and national affairs writer at the Portland Press Herald, where he received a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. A longtime foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Chronicle, he has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian, Politico, and dozens of other publications. A graduate of Tufts University and the University of Chicago, he is the author of American Nations, American Character, The Lobster Coast, The Republic of Pirates, and Ocean's End. He lives in Maine.