Martin Dugard (author)

Martin Dugard (born June 1, 1961 in Maine) is an American author living in Rancho Santa Margarita, Orange County, California. He and his wife have three sons.
Dugard began writing professionally in 1988. Bored by an unfulfilling corporate marketing job, he began writing articles for endurance sports magazines such as Competitor and Runner's World in the mornings and on weekends. In 1993, inspired by a three-week journey to Madagascar to cover the Raid Gauloises adventure race, Dugard left the corporate world to pursue a full-time writing career. Although he has returned to journalism from time to time, as when covering the Tour de France from 1999-2008, Dugard's primary focus is writing narrative non-fiction. Dugard wrote his first work of history in 2000. Farther Than Any Man saw his first usage of the fast-paced, page-turning style that has come to define Dugard's body of work.

Martin Dugard's works include:

• The Explorers ISBN 978-1451677584
• Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth ISBN 978-0071358217
• Farther Than Any Man: The Rise and Fall of Capt. James Cook, ISBN 978-0743400695
• Into Africa: The dramatic retelling of the Stanley-Livingstone story, ISBN 978-0553814477
• The Last Voyage of Columbus. ISBN 978-0316154567
• The Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War, 1846–1848 ISBN 978-0803228122
• To Be a Runner: How Racing Up Mountains, Running with the Bulls, or Just Taking on a 5-K Makes You a Better Person (and the World a Better place) ISBN 978-1609611088

Co-written with Bill O'Reilly

• Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever ISBN 978-0805093070
• Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot ISBN 978-0805096668
• Killing Jesus: A History ISBN 978-0805098549
• Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General ISBN 978-0805096682
• Killing Reagan: A Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency ISBN 978-1627792417
• Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan ISBN 978-1-5098-4147-9

His 2008 screenplay, A Warrior's Heart, was released as a feature film starring Kellan Lutz and Ashley Greene. It was also presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 and was released in the United States on 2 December 2011.

For a number of years, Dugard wrote a daily blog entitled The Paper Kenyan offering readers a daily riff on history, endurance sports, and travel. He still blogs from time to time, though on a much less frequent basis.

Dugard regularly immerses himself in his research to understand characters and their motivations better. To better understand Columbus he traveled through Spain, the Caribbean and Central America. He followed Henry Morton Stanley’s path across Tanzania while researching Into Africa (managing to get thrown into an African prison in the process) and swam in the tiger shark-infested waters of Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay to recreate Captain James Cook’s death for Farther Than Any Man. On the more personal side of adventure, Dugard competed in the Raid Gauloises endurance race three times, and flew around the world as an airline passenger at twice the speed of sound aboard an Air France Concorde. The time of 31 hours and 28 minutes set a world record for global circumnavigation. Dugard’s magazine writing has appeared in Esquire, Outside, Sports Illustrated, and GQ, among others. In 2005, he branched out from writing and adventure to take a walk-on position as head cross-country and track coach at JSerra High School in San Juan Capistrano. His cross country teams have won three California state championships and five Southern Section titles, and he has coached a number of distance runners to individual crowns.