Donald Grady ShometteDonald Grady Shomette completed his undergraduate work in art and art history at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. His early career as a graphic designer for the Wall Street Journal, Grolier Publishing in New York City, and the Washington Postin Washington, D.C., and as art director for several advertising agencies, and the Federal Government, earned him numerous awards in the field of visual communications. For more than two decades he served on the staff of the Library of Congress and simultaneously as director of Nautical Archaeological Associates, Inc., a non-profit research organization, which conducted among others endeavors the first underwater archaeological surveys in the states of Maryland, New Jersey, and Arkansas. As a historian Shomette has served as a cultural resources management consultant for numerous states, various agencies of the U.S. Government, museums, universities, and non-profit research establishments. As a marine archaeologist he has worked in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain under the sponsorship of such institutions as the National Geographic Society, the National Park Service, the U.S. Navy, and various educational foundations and museums. He is currently CEO of Cultural Resources Management. Shomette is the author of seventeen books, the most recent being Privateers of the Revolution: War on the New Jersey Coast, 1775-1783, published in July 2016 by Schiffer Publishing. His newest book, Anaconda's Tail: The Civil War on the Potomac Frontier 1861-1865, appeared in Fall 2019. He is a contributor to three international encyclopedias and two anthologies of history. His many scientific and popular articles have appeared in such publications as National Geographic Magazine, History and Technology, American Neptune and Sea History. He has appeared in documentaries on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, Maryland Public Television, NBC, CBS, and the BBC. For more than a dozen years he served as a lecturer for the Smithsonian Journeys Program in the Great Lakes and along the entirety of the North Atlantic Seaboard of the United States. Thrice winner of the prestigious John Lyman Book Award for Best American Maritime History, and once winner of the Marion V. Brewington Book award for Naval Literature, Shomette was also honored with the Calvert Prize, the highest award in Maryland for historic preservation. In 1997 he was awarded an Honorary Ph.D. in Humane Letters by the University of Baltimore for his contributions to the arts, science, and literature. His most recent endeavors have taken him into the field of historic cartography for the National Geographic Society, and into recorded sound and music as lyricist and music producer for Millstone Landing Productions. Read More Read Less