Ian W. Toll

Ian W. Toll (born 1967) is an American author and military historian. He lives in San Francisco and New York.

Education
Toll received a B.A. in history from Georgetown University in 1989, and a masters degree in public policy (M.P.P.) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1995.

Career
Toll is the author of Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy; Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942; and The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944. The latter two titles are the first two volumes of a nonfiction trilogy about the Pacific War.

Earlier in his career, he was a political aide and speechwriter to U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes and New York Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundine. Subsequently, Toll was an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and an equity research analyst at three investment banks, covering communications, software, and e-commerce stocks.

Awards
Six Frigates was the 2007 recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature and the William E. Colby Military Writers Award.

Pacific Crucible received the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction in 2012.

Books

 * Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy, W. W. Norton, 2006. ISBN 0393058476
 * Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942, W. W. Norton, 2011. ISBN 9780393068139
 * The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944, W. W. Norton, 2015. ISBN 9780393080643