Skip to main content

Jack Kelly

Biography

Jack Kelly

Jack Kelly is the author of five critically acclaimed novels. His latest book is BAND OF GIANTS: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America’s Independence, which historian John Ferling called “a sprightly and illuminating history of the Revolutionary War.” Critics praised his history, GUNPOWDER: Alchemy, Bombards & Pyrotechnics as “evocative, brilliantly succinct and excruciatingly powerful.” A journalist, novelist and historian, he has contributed to American Heritage, American Legacy, Invention & Technology and other national periodicals, and is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Nonfiction Literature. He has appeared on The History Channel, been interviewed on National Public Radio, and conducted book signings across the country. He spent his childhood in a town in the canal corridor adjacent to Palmyra, Joseph Smith’s home and passed summer afternoons watching barges negotiate the locks. He now lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Jack Kelly

Books by Jack Kelly

Heaven's Ditch: God, Gold, and Murder on the Erie Canal
by Jack Kelly - History, Nonfiction

The technological marvel of its age, the Erie Canal grew out of a sudden fit of inspiration. Proponents didn't just dream; they built a 360-mile waterway entirely by hand and largely through wilderness. As excitement crackled down its length, the canal became the scene of the most striking outburst of imagination in American history. It made New York the financial capital of America and brought the modern world crashing into the frontier. Men and women saw God face to face, gained and lost fortunes, and reveled in a period of intense spiritual creativity. HEAVEN’S DITCH illuminates the spiritual and political upheavals along this "psychic highway" from its opening in 1825 through 1844.

Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence
by Jack Kelly - History, Nonfiction

BAND OF GIANTS brings to life the founders who fought for our independence in the Revolutionary War. Here, Jack Kelly captures the fraught condition of the war --- the bitterly divided populace, the lack of supplies, the repeated setbacks on the battlefield, and the appalling physical hardships. That these inexperienced warriors could take on and defeat the superpower of the day was one of the most remarkable feats in world history.