Scott Ellsworth

Writer and Historian

Scott Ellsworth is the author of The Secret Game, winner of the 2016 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. He has written about American history for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times and was formerly a historian at the Smithsonian Institution. He is also the author of The World Beneath Their Feet and Death in a Promised Land. Scott lives in Ann Arbor, where he teaches in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Smiling older man with a bald head, gray mustache, and blue shirt under a dark blazer, posing in front of a blurred indoor background.

Union soldiers in blue uniforms escort prisoners past a burning building with a large hole in the wall while smoke and flames rise, during the American Civil War.

Books

The rise and fall of John Wilkes Booth: America’s first celebrity assassin

Before becoming America’s most infamous assassin, John Wilkes Booth was a magnetic actor who was beloved by audiences and courted by critics.