Colin Woodard is an award-winning historian and a New York Times bestselling author. 

Author of the bestseller American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of America, Woodard has written six books, including The Republic of Pirates, a New York Times bestselling history of Blackbeard’s pirate gang that was made into a primetime NBC series, and Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, which tells the harrowing story of the creation of the American myth in the 19th century, a story that reverberates in the news cycle today.

He is the recipient of the 2012 George Polk Award for journalism and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting. Colin is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University where he is launching Nationhood Lab, a project to devise and disseminate a new civic national story for the U.S.

A native of Maine, Colin has reported from more than 50 countries from all seven continents. He lived in Eastern Europe for more than four years, where he witnessed firsthand the collapse of the Soviet empire and the transition that ensued. 

Colin spoke with Clint about what he’s learned writing his book, living in the Balkans, and how American Nations applies to the cultural fracturing of the United States today.