James Campbell is an award-winning author of five nonfiction books and many magazine articles. Campbell embraces the adventures, hardships, and experiences that allow him to capture history in a personal and insightful way. At the same time, he wades into the research that enables him to understand the sweep of history as well as its unique and unexpected details.

Some highlights from Campbell adventurous career: In 2006, he walked across New Guinea’s Papuan Peninsula, rediscovering the path of the heroic, WWII Ghost Mountain Boys. Just over a decade later, he and his 15-year-old daughter and a small group of U.S. and Australian adventurers, and Native Papua New Guineans trekked the same trail. He climbed Papua New Guinea’s second highest mountain with his wife and brother; scuba dived/dove with Cuban marine biologists in the wild Jardines de la Reina archipelago; sailed across Micronesia with the world’s last star navigators; lived in the Arctic with Alaska’s last hunter-trapper-gatherers; backpacked with his daughter across the Brooks Range and then canoed out to the Arctic Ocean; traveled across Central and South America to tell the story of Alan Rabinowitz, the world’s foremost jaguar biologist; and documented the stories of black sailors who survived the Port Chicago explosion and were later accused of mutiny (those same sailors were exonerated by the Secretary of the Navy in 2024).

Campbell has appeared on NPR, BBC Radio, PBS and on many local radio and TV stations, and on a variety of podcasts. He is engaging speaker, gifted with a storytelling style and a sense of humor that audiences enjoy. To book him as a speaker, please email Gabby Nugent at gnugent@wwnorton.com

Campbell is also a partner in Gum Street Productions, and has worked as an Executive Producer on Great Lake Warriors (History Channel), The Last Alaskans (Discovery), The Real Hatfields and McCoys: Forever Feuding (Fox Nation), and Gold and Greed (Netflix).