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Dean King
About Dean King :
Dean King is an award-winning and best-selling author of nine non-fiction books. His most recent, Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival, was made into a History Channel special documentary and is currently being developed as a feature film. Dean tells stories of great adventure with tremendous dedication to searching out the truth. His storytelling ability shines through in his words both on paper and at the podium. He speaks on his writings, his explorations and the vital lessons learned from some of history’s most epic journeys. Dean’s extensive adventures have made him a worldly man and a real-life Indiana Jones. He has traveled many continents and countries seeking adventure, and his intellect, humor, and experience make him a masterful storyteller.
While researching Skeletons on the Zahara, Dean retraced Captain James Riley's route on foot and on camelback through Western Sahara. He is now working on the story of the thirty women who participated in Mao Zedong’s Long March. In 1934, Mao led 86,000 Red Army soldiers away from their base in southeastern China, fleeing the forces of Chiang Kaishek. After crossing eleven provinces, 24 major rivers, and dozens of snow-covered mountains in one year—while fighting countless battles—fewer than 5,000 were left. Through the eyes of the resilient women who accompanied Mao, Unbound: The True Story of the Women Who Walked 4,000 Miles with Mao tells the story of one of history’s epic treks, of amazing physical and psychological hardship, of bonds formed under fire, of loss and redemption. In 2006, Dean traveled sections of the route and interviewed surviving women Long Marchers.
Dean is not unfamiliar with personal hardship himself. A former member of a collegiate national championship lacrosse team, at age twenty-seven, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. Following his battle with cancer, he and his wife, Jessica, and another cancer survivor created a book called Cancer Combat, which gives practical hard-hitting advice for patients and their helpers and family in facing the challenges of beating cancer.
Dean is an avid hiker and likes to clear his mind on cross-country treks. He writes: “I took my first major walk—190 miles coast to coast in England—in 1986 after escaping a tedious temporary job as a sales clerk in a London Tie Rack. The job made the open air all the more glorious, even if the cloud ceiling was about head-high almost every day.” Ever since then, Dean and his friend, Rob, an English investment banker, along with various friends, plan walks whenever they can. They have trekked in the shadows of Tintern Abbey in Wales, crossed glaciers on the Tour du Mont Blanc, and followed Alf Wainwright's route through England’s North York Moors, Yorkshire Dales, where they “encountered horizontal sheets of rain,” and Lake District with “lush hills with rocky tops ringing with their literary inspiration.”
A former contributing editor to Men's Journal, Dean has written for Esquire, Travel & Leisure, New York Magazine, and The New York Times, among others. His books include the highly acclaimed best-selling Patrick O'Brian companion books A Sea of Words (1995) and Harbors and High Seas (1996) and the anthology Every Man Will Do His Duty (1997). His biography Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed (2000) was a Daily Telegraph book of the year.
King speaks frequently on his work and on writing. Hear Dean speak about what he goes through to research and tell his stories. His love for telling stories shines, and his great adventure stories and congeniality ensure that he will connect with every audience member.
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Speech Titles :
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o Master and Commander: Patrick O’Brian, The Art, The Man, and The Enduring Lessons of the Age of Sail.
o China: How the Women of the Long March Changed the World
o Skeletons on the Zahara: The True Story Behind the Nationally Best-Selling Book
o To Tell the Truth: Pursuing the Book Across Europe, China, and the Sahara
o Cancer Combat: Real Stories, Real Strategies
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Books by Dean King :
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Skeletons on the Zahara
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Everywhere hailed as a masterpiece of historical adventure, this enthralling narrative recounts the experiences of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the bone-dry heart of the Sahara. The ordeal of these men - who found themselves tested by barbarism, murder, starvation, death, dehydration, and hostile tribes that roamed the desert on camelback - is made indelibly vivid in this gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.
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