Oct 1, 2016
About Me
I’m an avid reader (as profiled in the New York Times) and the author of four books of nonfiction. My fifth book is about the life of a revolutionary-era non-binary minister fighting to save the soul of America and will be published in 2023. I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and attended Tufts University and Harvard Law School. After working for Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, I began my career an environmental lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and then as president and executive director of Save the Sound in Norwalk, Connecticut. In 2008, I turned to full-time reading of everything and the writing of nonfiction.
About My Books
American Rebels: How the Hancock, Adams, and Quincy Families Fanned the Flames of Revolution, published in March 2020, explores for the first time the intimate connections and intertwined lives of John Hancock, John Adams, Josiah Quincy Junior, Abigail Smith Adams, and Dorothy Quincy Hancock.
“Sankovitch has woven a compelling, potent chronicle of members of three principal American families that will be valued by readers of American history at all levels,” from Library Journal, in its starred review.
“Best-selling author Nina Sankovitch has given us a magnificent, solid work on the life, times and people who helped guide the American colonies to freedom from English rule…. Sankovitch has combined detailed research and reporting and a critically straightforward conversational writing style that puts her readers in the hearts and minds of participants and, more important, offers us fresh perspective of the events leading to revolution here,” wrote Jack Shea of The Martha’s Vineyard Times.
Publishers Weekly also praised American Rebels: “Historian Sankovitch (The Lowells of Massachusetts) explores the family connections and revolutionary politics shared by John Hancock, John and Abigail Adams, and Josiah Quincy Jr., in this richly detailed and fluidly written account…Sankovitch leavens her deeply researched account with wit, and presents a persuasive and entertaining portrait of life in colonial Boston. Revolutionary War buffs will savor this thoughtful addition to popular histories of the period.”
Booklist recommended American Rebels: “Sankovitch lays out the evolution of eighteenth-century political thought and shows how it arose within these families and their interconnections. Students of American Revolution history will find a fresh perspective here.”
Goodreads named American Rebels one of “the most highly anticipated new and upcoming nonfiction… books readers can’t wait to crack open…”
James Comey, former FBI director and author of A Higher Loyalty wrote, “American Rebels is a fascinating and richly detailed story of three New England families who emerged from their small world to change ours forever.”
American Rebels: How the Hancock, Adams, and Quincy Families Fanned the Flames of Revolution won the 2021 New England Society in the City of New York Book Award for Best Historical Nonfiction.
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, published in 2011, is a memoir of the year I spent reading a book a day for one year. It was hailed as “an outstanding debut” by Kirkus Reviews and designated a “book to read now” by Oprah, and praised by The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, Bookpage, Publishers’s Weekly, and Booklist.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing, published in 2014, is a combination of history and memoir, in which I explore the history of letter-writing. Oprah hailed Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing, as a book “every joy-seeking woman needs to read” and my second book also received celebratory reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review, Library Journal, and Booklist.
The Lowells of Massachusetts: An American Family, punlished in 2017, tells the story of the Lowell family, from Percival Lowle’s arrival in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639 through the blazing of Amy Lowell’s poetic glory in the early twentieth century.
Critics hailed The Lowells of Massachusetts as “[A] stirring saga …Vivid and intimate, Ms. Sankovitch’s account entertains us with Puritans and preachers, Tories and rebels, abolitionists and industrialists, lecturers and poets … Ms. Sankovitch has made a compelling contribution to Massachusetts and American History.” ( The Wall Street Journal)
“Meet American’s Most Extraordinary Family: the Lowells of Massachusetts,” said The Washington Post: “Sankovitch has searched out these letters to write the powerful story of one of America’s most extraordinary families, a family that helped shape the course of American history in dramatic and decisive ways…By the final pages of this volume, one feels deeply attached to the individual Lowells, while also exhilarated at having experienced this grand sweep of American history.“
“[Sankovitch’s] skillful blending of context and detail makes the vicissitudes of one family emblematic of a nation’s,” proclaimed The New Yorker.
The Connecticut Post called it, “an astonishingly compact 328 pages (considering how much family history it covers) and reads like a fine novel. You might be reminded of one of those deep digs into history and storytelling that James Michener used to do in his novels “Hawaii” and “Chesapeake.”
“A fascinating collective biography … paying tribute to both worthy individuals and everyone else in this prominent, complicated family,” said Booklist.
The Library Journal also recommended The Lowells of Massachusetts: “Sankovitch’s use of interpretative passages breathe color into descriptions of home life of various Lowells, adding an artistic dimension to the account. Her ability to switch the focus among the family members while keeping readers fully engaged in the narrative is a significant achievement.”
“A sturdy, busy multibiography of an eminent American family… Exhaustive work by a clear admirer and dogged researcher,” said Kirkus Reviews.
