A fascinating new history of America, told through the stories of a diverse cast of ten extraordinary—and often overlooked—adventurers, from Sacagawea to Matthew Henson to Sally Ride, who pushed the boundaries of discovery and determined our national destiny.

Across two centuries and many thousands of miles of terrain, Amanda Bellows offers an ode to our country’s most intrepid adventurers—and reveals the history of America in the process.

Amanda Bellows is a historian of the United States and teaches at Lang College – The New School in New York City. She is also an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. Bellows received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She has published writing in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, and elsewhere. She is the author of The Explorers: A New History of America in Ten Expeditions (William Morrow) and American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination (UNC Press).

Dr. Bellows is a Fellow of the Explorers Club and a member of the Society of Women Geographers. 

Amanda Bellows