James L. Haley is the award-winning author of The Bliven Putnam naval series, which includes The Shores of Tripoli, A Darker Sea, and The Devil in Paradise, as well as numerous books on Native American, Texas, and Western history, and historical and contemporary fiction. His two biographies, Sam Houston (2002) and Wolf: The Lives of Jack London (2010), each won the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas (2006) won the Fehrenbach Award of the Texas Historical Commission.