Meet the Author of The YMCA 175 Years of Innovation that Shaped America
James L. Haley was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and grew up near Fort Worth, graduating summa cum laude from the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in Political Science. After graduate study at the University of Texas in Austin Law School, he resigned to concentrate on a literary career.
Haley first broke into national print at the age of 19, with a biography of the circus elephant, Jumbo, for American Heritage Magazine. His books of history began in 1976 with The Buffalo War: A History of the Red River Indian Uprising of 1874-1875. Continuously in print for over forty years, it remains the definitive history of the final war of the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne Indians against Anglo domination. Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait, followed in 1981, also from Doubleday. It shows how a knowledge of Native American culture rewrites traditional history. It is also still in print.
Departing from a scholarly format, Haley wrote two popular, oversized photo histories of Texas. Doubleday’s Texas: An Album of History appeared in 1985 and St. Martin’s published its sequel, Texas: From Spindletop Through World War II, in 1993.
At this point Haley began writing novels: a Double-D Western called The Kings of San Carlos, published by Doubleday in 1986; then a mass market original paperback adventure for Bantam books in 1989, The Lions of Tsavo, the motion picture rights to which were purchased by Walt Disney Pictures' Touchstone division. Final Refuge, about the importance of zoos in the preservation of endangered species, appeared in October 1994 from St. Martin's Press.
Haley curated various historical exhibitions while spending 15 years in labor on Sam Houston, the most intimate biography ever written about that legendary American icon. It appeared in March, 2002, and won 9 awards, including the Tullis Memorial Prize, awarded by the Texas State Historical Association for the best book on Texas in that year, and the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. A one-volume Texas history entitled Passionate Nation, was published in April of 2006 from the Free Press imprint of Simon and Schuster. It went into its third printing the same year, and won the T. R. Fehrenbach Book Award from the Texas Historical Commission.
In 2008 Haley co-authored One Ranger Returns, a sequel volume of memoirs with legendary Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson, and then ghost-wrote Jane’s Window, the memoirs of Austin social lioness Jane Dunn Sibley. In May 2010, WOLF: The Lives of Jack London, won a second Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.
The Texas Supreme Court: A Narrative History, 1836-1986, was published in February 2013 by the University of Texas Press, and CAPTIVE PARADISE: A History of Hawaii appeared in fall 2014 from St. Martin’s Press. In 2013 Haley signed a 3-book contract with G. P. Putnam’s Sons for a series of early American navy sailing adventure novels. The first one, The Shores of Tripoli, appeared in fall 2016, followed by A Darker Sea a year later, which was the finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award as best novel by a Texas writer in 2017. The Devil in Paradise was published in 2019 and Capt. Putnam for the Republic of Texas in 2021, which won the Virginia M. Law Book Award from the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.
Haley has lectured extensively, from Phoenix to Boston to Savannah to Boise. In 2022-23, he was Writer-in-Residence at The Pines Ranch, a nonprofit retreat facility in the high Rockies of Colorado, and he now lives in Austin, Texas, researching and writing two new narrative histories, YMCA: 175 Years of Innovation that Shaped America and A Passion for Dinosaurs: Dr. J. Neal Naranjo and The Museum.
