James Bradley

James Bradley burst onto the national scene as an author in 2000 with his New York Times #1 best-selling book Flags of Our Fathers. The Times called it “the surprise runaway nonfiction best seller of the season." Flags of Our Fathers was released as a motion picture in 2007, and was directed by Clint Eastwood. It is the companion film to the Academy Award-nominated Letters from Iwo Jima.

Flags of Our Fathers is about the six boys who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. The photograph is the most reproduced in photographic history. One of the figures in the photograph is Bradley’s father, John Bradley. Bradley’s second book, Flyboys, debuted September 30, 2003 on NBC’s top-rated morning program, The Today Show and was followed by other national media and an extended two-month, 25-city national book tour. Flyboys is the secret story of eight naval aviators who were beheaded on the island next to Iwo Jima.

In November 2009, Bradley released his third book, the critically acclaimed The Imperial Cruise. An in-depth exploration of Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy, it was hailed by the New York Times as “startling enough to change conventional wisdom,” and was the bestselling history book of 2009. His book, The China Mirage, is described as a spellbinding history of turbulent U.S.-China relations from the 19th century to World War II and Mao's ascent. The China Mirage released in the fall of 2014.

Bradley was raised in Wisconsin, studied at the University of Notre Dame, Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan and graduated with a degree in East Asian History from the University of Wisconsin. Bradley has vast experience writing and producing corporate films and corporate meetings; he has traveled the world, living and working in more than 40 countries for nearly a decade. He has run companies in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. Bradley is President of the James Bradley Peace Foundation, which is dedicated to fostering understanding between America and Asia. The foundation sends American schoolchildren to High School in Japan and China where they live with a family.

Join James Bradley in exploring the battlefields of the South Pacific on two National Geographic Orion voyages.