Matthew J. Davenport

In an effort to tell of the American experience in the First World War, Matthew J. Davenport has dug through archives and family collections coast to coast to consult the letters, diaries, reports, and memoirs of the doughboys who served at the front. His book First Over There, which tells the story of the first American victory in the trenches of the Western Front, was a finalist for the 2015 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History and has been heralded by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian James McPherson as "military history at its best."

Matthew served in the Army Reserve and is a member of the American Legion, the Western Front Association, and the Military Writers Society of America. A native of St. Louis and a former prosecutor, he practices law in eastern North Carolina, where he teaches at East Carolina University and lives with his wife and two sons.