William Brandon (author)

For other people of the same name, see William Brandon (disambiguation).

William Edward Brandon (September 21, 1914 – April 11, 2002) was an American writer and historian.

Brandon was born in Kokomo, Indiana, but spent his childhood in various locales, including the Yucatán and New Mexico. He began working as a professional writer in 1938, although this was interrupted by his service as a photographer for the United States Army Air Forces in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

During his long career Brandon published a variety of short fiction, essays, and poetry, which appeared in magazines such as Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The Saturday Evening Post, and Reader's Digest. However, he is best known for his historical work documenting Native Americans and the American West. Although Brandon's formal education ended after high school, his scholarship was sufficiently respected that he was from 1966–1967 a visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and later conducted a seminar series on Native American literature at California State College in Long Beach, California.

Brandon died in Clearlake, California, on April 11, 2002, of cancer.

Literary works

• The Dangerous Dead (1943) Dodd, Mead & Company
• The Men and the Mountain (1955) ISBN 0-8371-5873-7. An account of Frémont's failed fourth expedition.
• The American Heritage Book of Indians (1961) ISBN 0-517-39180-5. (short introduction by John F. Kennedy)
• The Magic World: American Indian Songs and Poems (1971) ISBN 0-8214-0991-3
• The Last Americans: The Indian in American Culture (1974) ISBN 0-07-007201-9
• New Worlds for Old: Reports from the New World and Their Effect on the Development of Social Thought in Europe, 1500–1800 (1986) ISBN 0-8214-0818-6
• Quivira: Europeans in the Region of the Santa Fe Trail, 1540–1820 (1991) ISBN 0-8214-0950-6
• The Rise and Fall of North American Indians: From Prehistory Through Geronimo (2003) ISBN 1-58979-211-4