Author Guide · Narrative History
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On the night of 30 January 1945, American Army Rangers, with Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas, crept across open fields to a Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan in the Philippines and brought out more than 500 prisoners of war and civilians. Hampton Sides, a Memphis-born magazine writer, told that story in Ghost Soldiers (2001), his first bestseller, and found his subject: true stories of war, manhunts and doomed expeditions, told like novels and built from diaries, letters and interviews. Since then he has followed Kit Carson across the American West, the hunt for Martin Luther King’s killer, a ship trapped in Arctic ice, the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir and Captain Cook’s last voyage. This guide covers his 8 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 key books · 1992–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Hampton Sides’s best-known book is Ghost Soldiers (2001), about the 1945 rescue of prisoners of war at Cabanatuan. His other key histories are Blood and Thunder (2006), Hellhound on His Trail (2010), In the Kingdom of Ice (2014), On Desperate Ground (2018) and The Wide Wide Sea (2024); he has also published two collections of his journalism. Start with Ghost Soldiers. Below are all eight in order, and which story each one tells.
Where to Start with Hampton Sides
If you want the book that made his name
→ Ghost Soldiers (2001) — the 1945 raid on the Cabanatuan prison camp.
If you want a survival story
→ In the Kingdom of Ice (2014) — the USS Jeannette, trapped in the Arctic ice.
If you want a manhunt
→ Hellhound on His Trail (2010) — the search for Martin Luther King’s assassin.
If you want his newest book
→ The Wide Wide Sea (2024) — Captain Cook’s third and final voyage.
8 Hampton Sides Books, in Order
Stomping Grounds
His first book, published as W. Hampton Sides when he was about thirty. He spent time inside eight American subcultures and wrote about each from the inside, the method of the magazine features he was already writing.
Ghost Soldiers
On 30 January 1945 Lt. Col. Henry Mucci’s 6th Ranger Battalion, with Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas under Captains Juan Pajota and Eduardo Joson, raided the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan and freed more than 500 prisoners and civilians. Sides cuts between the raiders’ approach and the prisoners’ three years in captivity since Bataan. It won the PEN USA Award for nonfiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, and was one of the sources for the film The Great Raid (2005).
Americana
A collection of his magazine pieces about contemporary America, from Outside and other publications, gathered after the success of Ghost Soldiers. It shows the reporter behind the histories: profiles, odd corners of the country and the people who live in them.
Blood and Thunder
The American conquest of the Southwest in the 1840s to 1860s, told through the frontiersman Kit Carson and the Navajo nation he eventually fought, ending with the forced Long Walk of the Navajo to Bosque Redondo. Time named it one of the ten best books of 2006, and the History Book Club and the Western Writers of America chose it as the year’s best history. It became the basis of a PBS American Experience documentary.
Hellhound on His Trail
Two stories run side by side: James Earl Ray, an escaped convict, stalking Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, Sides’s home town, where he shot him on 4 April 1968, and the FBI manhunt that followed across two continents. Ray later pleaded guilty, in 1969. The book reached number six on the New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for the 2011 Edgar Award for best fact crime. Sides’s research was also the basis for the PBS documentary Roads to Memphis (2010).
In the Kingdom of Ice
In 1879 the USS Jeannette, under Lieutenant Commander George W. De Long and financed by the newspaper owner James Gordon Bennett Jr., sailed from San Francisco for the North Pole, following the theory of the German cartographer August Petermann that an open polar sea lay beyond the ice. The ship was trapped, and crushed, and the crew set out across the ice towards Siberia. Mark Bowden called it “the most dramatic polar mission you’ve never heard of.”
On Desperate Ground
The Battle of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea in late 1950, when Chinese armies surrounded the 1st Marine Division in sub-zero cold and the Marines fought their way out to the sea. Sides tells it through Marines, commanders, pilots, Korean civilians and Chinese soldiers, and is sharply critical of General Douglas MacArthur. The Washington Post named it one of the ten best books of 2018.
The Wide Wide Sea
Captain James Cook’s third voyage, which left England in July 1776 with the Resolution and the Discovery: first to take Mai, a Polynesian man who had become a celebrity in London, home to the Society Islands, then to search for the Northwest Passage from the Pacific side. The voyage reached the Arctic ice off Alaska and ended with Cook’s killing at Kealakekua Bay, Hawai‘i, in 1779. Sides draws on the many crew journals and on Pacific oral history. The book was named one of The New York Times’ ten best books of 2024.
In What Order to Read Hampton Sides
Every Hampton Sides history stands alone, so you can follow whichever subject pulls you: war, the American West, a manhunt or polar exploration. Most readers begin with Ghost Soldiers, which is the most tightly built of them, and then go on to In the Kingdom of Ice or Hellhound on His Trail.
Ghost Soldiers and On Desperate Ground make a natural pair of war books, and In the Kingdom of Ice and The Wide Wide Sea a pair of voyages that go wrong. Blood and Thunder is the longest and the broadest in scope; read it when you have time for it. Stomping Grounds and Americana are journalism, for readers who already like his voice.
A reading path
1. Ghost Soldiers (2001)
2. In the Kingdom of Ice (2014)
3. Hellhound on His Trail (2010)
4. On Desperate Ground (2018)
5. The Wide Wide Sea (2024)
Everything Else Hampton Sides Published
Beyond the 8 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Edited collection
1
1 book · 2001
- 2001Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison and Other Urgent Inquiries into the Odd Nature of Naturethe best of “The Wild File”, a question-and-answer column from Outside magazine, edited by Sides
The years · 1962–2024
Quick facts about Hampton Sides
- Known for
- Hampton Sides is known for narrative histories of war, manhunts and doomed expeditions, written with the pace of a thriller and built from first-hand accounts.
- 1962
- Born in Memphis, Tennessee
- 1992
- First book, Stomping Grounds
- 2001
- Ghost Soldiers
- Born
- 1962, Memphis, Tennessee
- Education
- Memphis University School; Yale University, BA in history
- Journalism
- Editor-at-large for Outside; writes for National Geographic, The New Yorker, Smithsonian and others; twice nominated for National Magazine Awards
- Lives
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife, the journalist Anne Goodwin Sides
- Prizes
- PEN USA Award and Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Ghost Soldiers
- Honours
- Member of the Society of American Historians; honorary doctorate from Colorado College (2017)
The red mark is 2001: Ghost Soldiers, the bestseller that turned a magazine writer into a narrative historian.
How Hampton Sides Writes: History Told Like a Thriller
Sides chooses stories with a built-in clock: a raid that must happen before the prisoners are killed, an assassin with a head start, a ship being crushed by ice. He usually tells them on two tracks that close in on each other, the Rangers and the prisoners in Ghost Soldiers, James Earl Ray and the FBI in Hellhound on His Trail, so that each chapter ends with a reason to read the next.
Everything on the page comes from documents and witnesses. He builds scenes from diaries, letters, journals and official records; for The Wide Wide Sea he worked from the journals of Cook’s officers and crew and from Hawaiian and other Pacific oral traditions.
He is a historian of people rather than of policy. Generals, presidents and explorers appear, but the books spend as much time with privates, prisoners, sailors and the people on the other side, Navajo in Blood and Thunder, Chinese soldiers in On Desperate Ground, Polynesians in The Wide Wide Sea. He passes judgment where the record supports it, as on MacArthur’s conduct of the Korean War, but leaves most of the moral weighing to the reader.
Watch
Hampton Sides interviewed on On Desperate Ground
New Mexico In Focus correspondent Megan Kamerick talks to Sides about the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, the obstacles the 1st Marine Division faced there, and what drew him to the story.
Frequently asked questions about Hampton Sides’s books
How many books has Hampton Sides written?
Eight, as listed on this page: six narrative histories, from Ghost Soldiers (2001) to The Wide Wide Sea (2024), and two books of journalism, Stomping Grounds (1992) and Americana (2004). He also edited Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison (2001), a collection from Outside magazine, listed in the bibliography.
What are Hampton Sides’s books in order?
Stomping Grounds (1992), Ghost Soldiers (2001), Americana (2004), Blood and Thunder (2006), Hellhound on His Trail (2010), In the Kingdom of Ice (2014), On Desperate Ground (2018) and The Wide Wide Sea (2024).
Where should I start with Hampton Sides?
With Ghost Soldiers, his breakthrough book about the 1945 raid on the Cabanatuan prison camp. If you prefer exploration to war, start with In the Kingdom of Ice instead.
What is Hampton Sides’s most famous book?
Ghost Soldiers (2001). It was a bestseller, won the PEN USA Award for nonfiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, and was one of the two books behind the film The Great Raid (2005).
Do you need to read Hampton Sides’s books in order?
No. Each book tells a separate true story, from the Philippines in 1945 to the Pacific in the 1770s, and none refers back to another. Choose by subject.
Have any Hampton Sides books been made into films?
The Great Raid (2005), produced by Miramax, was based partly on Ghost Soldiers and partly on William Breuer’s The Great Raid on Cabanatuan. Blood and Thunder was the subject of a PBS American Experience documentary, and his research for Hellhound on His Trail was the basis of the PBS documentary Roads to Memphis (2010). Screen adaptations of Hellhound on His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice and The Wide Wide Sea have been announced or optioned.
Is Hampton Sides a historian or a journalist?
Both. He studied history at Yale, is editor-at-large of Outside magazine and a member of the Society of American Historians. He describes himself as a narrative historian: his books are works of history written with the techniques of magazine journalism and fiction.
Is Hampton Sides still alive?
Yes. Born in Memphis in 1962, he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife, the journalist Anne Goodwin Sides. His most recent book, The Wide Wide Sea, was published in 2024.
Is The Wide Wide Sea for or against Captain Cook?
Neither, by design: in his author’s note Sides says he does not lionise, demonise or defend Cook. He presents Cook as a navigator curious about the peoples he met, while showing what his voyages set in motion for the Pacific, and he uses Hawaiian and other Pacific oral history alongside the British journals.
What is On Desperate Ground about?
The Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, fought in North Korea in late 1950, when the 1st Marine Division was surrounded by Chinese forces in extreme cold and fought its way out to the coast. Sides is sharply critical of General Douglas MacArthur’s overconfidence, and The Washington Post named the book one of the ten best of 2018.
Footnotes
- Hampton Sides — Wikipedia
- About Hampton — hamptonsides.com
- Sides, Hampton 1962– — Encyclopedia.com
- Raid at Cabanatuan — Wikipedia
- ‘The Wide Wide Sea’ revisits Capt. James Cook’s fateful final voyage — Fresh Air, NPR, 2024
- Author Hampton Sides brings history to life with story of Korean War battle — New Mexico PBS, 2018
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“…he’s more empirical than imperial and that he’s more inquisitive than acquisitive.”
— Hampton Sides on Captain Cook, interview with Dave Davies, Fresh Air, NPR (2024)
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