Biographer T.J. Stiles

More About the Author:
A Brief Autobiography by T.J. Stiles
I was born and raised in Minnesota, just outside of the town of Foley (pop. 1,200), where my father was one of two doctors and was the Benton County coroner. It was (and is) a farming community, a landscape of dairy and hog farms.

My father attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, in the 1950s, and liked to claim a relation to one of the James-Younger gang, William Stiles, who was killed on the streets of Northfield in 1876. (Despite a remarkable resemblance between my father and the hapless outlaw, there is almost certainly no relation.) I attended Carleton as well decades later, but had little idea that I would one day write a biography of Jesse James.

The Path Toward Jesse James
I graduated from Carleton with distinction in history, and accepted a fellowship to attend the graduate school of Columbia University in New York, where I studied European history, with a focus on agrarian societies and political violence. After I completed coursework, wrote a master's thesis, passed oral examinations, and received two graduate degrees (M.A. and M.Phil.), I decided against an academic career.

I began to work for Oxford University Press, where I worked closely with many leading American historians published by the press. During my years in publishing, I authored a five-volume series of historical anthologies. I also wrote articles for the Smithsonian, and essays that were published by the Denver Post and the Los Angeles Times.

I began to look for a way to write a large-scale narrative about the passage of the United States through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Having written about the guerrilla warfare in Missouri during the Civil War—the formative experience in Jesse James's life—I investigated further, and concluded that the outlaw had been sorely underestimated as a significant, purposeful, political figure. More than that, James remains an American icon—a challenging subject for a writer—and had never received the nonfiction treatment he deserved. I received a contract from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., to write the book, and spent approximately four years in total on it, including three spent researching and writing full-time.

The Transition to Commodore Vanderbilt
Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War received a generous reception both in the United States and abroad. By the time it appeared, I had already started work on my next biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, published on April 21, 2009 by Knopf. The Commodore, as Vanderbilt was called, lived from 1794 to 1877, leading an extraordinarily long and important career. Despite his great significance and iconic stature (or statue, since a twelve-foot bronze likeness of the Commodore still stands in front of Grand Central Station), he has been the subject of only one serious biography, a piece of business history written in 1942. Like Jesse James, the Commodore was a man of action who left no papers behind, just a few letters scattered in various collections. And like Jesse James, Vanderbilt often wished to conceal his activities. But he was, of course, a far more public figure, and there is far more material to work with than there was with a man who lived underground for his entire adult life.

In the course of about seven years dedicated to this book, I received some much-appreciated assistance. I was selected as a mentor for the Hertog Research Fellowship at Columbia University's School of the Arts, in which an MFA student worked as my research assistant. (I also taught a master class in nonfiction creative writing at Columbia). For the 2004-5 academic year, I was honored with selection as Gilder Lehrman Fellow in American History at the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Though I conducted research at three dozen different libraries and archives, I made the New York Public Library my research home, where I devoted many hours to the New York Central Railroad papers, among other collections.

From New York to San Francisco
The city of New York was my home for twenty years, from 1986 to 2006. I moved more than a dozen times since arriving there, living everywhere from West Harlem during the height of the crack epidemic to Park Slope, Brooklyn. I was in Brooklyn on September 11, 2001, making revisions to my Jesse James manuscript, when the burning smell of the World Trade Center entered my apartment. I last lived just off Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

During my final years in New York, I met my future wife, a native of the California Bay Area. At the beginning of the summer of 2006, we moved to California, where we were married on July 3, 2006, at Kirkwood, a spot near Lake Tahoe regularly visited by gold rush migrants. In 2007, we moved to San Francisco, where we live in the Baker Beach neighborhood of the historic Presidio national park, overlooking the commercial shipping that enters and leaves the Golden Gate, following the channel once used by Commodore Vanderbilt's steamships. And it was in San Francisco, in October 2007, that our son Dillon was born.

Over the years, I have poured concrete for hog pens; served as a 4-H program assistant; worked on a line at an electroplating plant; served as a janitor in the basement of the American Standard building; made telemarketing cold calls; manned the till at an inner-city liquor store; worked as an office temp; and filled tanks, fixed tires, and changed oil in a gas station. In publishing I worked as a copywriter, digesting manuscripts and producing catalog, jacket flap, and advertising copy. For the last decade I have been a full-time writer. In addition to my books, I have authored articles and book reviews for the New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic online, Smithsonian, Salon.com, and other publications.

Karate-Do
In high school, I was an avid football player and wrestler, serving as co-captain of the football team and winning two district wrestling championships. But when I was sixteen—while still wrestling and playing football—I began to practice traditional Shotokan karate (or "karate-do," as it's more formally known), which has become a lifelong passion.

Before graduating from Carleton College, I earned my first-degree black belt with the Japan Karate Association (or JKA), the flagship school of Shotokan karate in Japan. In choosing to go to Columbia University, I was influenced by the presence in New York of a senior JKA instructor, Sensei Masataka Mori, 8th dan (8th degree black-belt). Mr. Mori was reputed to be a demanding and very traditional teacher, which he proved to be. I am honored to call him my instructor still.

I currently hold a 4th dan (4th-degree black belt). I graduated from both the basic and advanced instructor training programs in New York, and am licensed as a class C instructor, rank examiner, and tournament judge by the Japan Karate Association. I founded the JKA at Columbia University in 1986, where I served as instructor until I left for California in 2006. I competed successfully in world and national (JKA Shotokan Karate-Do America) tournaments for many years, and retired from competition after the fall of 1999. Over the years, I have broken both hands, a few toes, one foot, and a number of ribs, and have had my face stitched up more than once. I continue to practice karate-do in San Francisco—so far, without injury.