David Inglehart

       David Inglehart is a graduate of Colby College and earned an M.A. (in English) from Middlebury. He has worked variously as a journalist, teacher and multimedia developer. In 1992 he invited the collaboration of two teaching colleagues and began work on Fateful Lightning: The American Civil War, which he published on CD-ROM in 1995. Three years later he completed a companion title on his own, Quest for Empire: The Napoleonic Wars, published in 1998. A final title, Born in Battle: The American Revolution was produced by the original Fateful Lightning team and released in 2001. In 2024 he published a memoir, “Near the Borderline: Coming of age (and then some) on the northern frontier.” He currently lives in mid-coast Maine.

William Hillenbrand

       William Hillenbrand received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Cortland, an MA (in English) from Pennsylvania State University and an MA in History from the University of Virginia. He began his teaching career at the Northfield Mount Hermon School, where he taught English and History and coached football and baseball for many years. In 1992 he began writing the text of Fateful Lightning, completing the work over the course of three summers–a testament to the benefits of the academic calendar as well as his prolific talents as a writer and historian. Startinging in 1998, he repeated the feat with the completion of a comprehensive study of the American Revolution, Born in Battle. He later taught English at the Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Dennis Kennedy

       Dennis Kennedy earned a B.A. from Stonehill College and an MA and PhD (in English) from the University of Massachusetts. He wrote his dissertation on Mark Twain and also specialized in Irish Studies. In arranging and performing the music for both Fateful Lightning and Born in Battle, Dennis brought a rare combination of scholarship and musicianship to the work, researching and writing an extensive songbook and providing lead vocals as well as accompaniment on instruments ranging from piano to penny whistle.