Timothy Egan

Timothy Egan is an acclaimed writer and veteran chronicler of the American experience, whose interests range wide across history and landscape, and into the spiritual realm. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, a popular columnist, and a National Book Award-winning author of eleven books.

Egan's forthcoming book, The Big Lonesome: The Buffalo Soldier Who Shaped the West (Viking, March 30, 2027), tells the story of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, a brilliant nineteenth century African-American officer whose career was blighted and ultimately ended by racism. His New York Times bestselling book, A Fever in the Heartland, about a murderous con man, the Klan's rise to power in Indiana in the 1920s, and the woman who led to their downfall, was a Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction and was a best book of the year for NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Chicago Review of Books, and the New York Public Library, in addition it was awarded the 2024 Washington State Book Award. His previous book, A Pilgrimage to Eternity, goes to the core questions of humanity, as Egan follows an ancient pilgrimage route a thousand miles from Canterbury to Rome. It received rapturous reviews and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020. “Egan is so well-informed he starts to seem like the world’s greatest tour guide,” wrote The New York Times. The book is “impossible to put down,” said The Chicago Tribune.

Egan’s National Book Award-winning The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, was a New York Times bestseller and influenced the Ken Burns’ film, The Dust Bowl. His book The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, was a New York Times bestseller, and a Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Entertainment Weekly, and Amazon Best Book of the Year. It also inspired the PBS documentary of the same name. In both films, Egan is featured prominently. His book Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward S. Curtis, was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly and was awarded the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

Egan was called a “master storyteller” (New York Times) for his nonfiction account of the Irish-American experience, The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero. A New York Times bestseller, the book recounts the improbable life of Thomas Francis Meagher, a Victorian rebel who was banished to Tasmania by the English, escaped to America, and fought for the Union in the American Civil War as a general of the famed Irish Brigade.

Egan was previously a regular New York Times opinion column, on politics, environment and the American West, his articles were consistently among the most read pieces on the NYT site. As a reporter, he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the series, “How Race is Lived in America.”

This third-generation Westerner is also the author of The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, a text consistently voted one of the essential books about the region. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. “When it comes to this spectacularly mildewed corner of the American linoleum, Timothy Egan gets it right,” said Tom Robbins.

Timothy Egan's website