Born in Newark, New Jersey, Jim Murphy is the author of more than 25 books for young people, including Inside the Alamo, The Great Fire, and A Young Patriot: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy. Mr. Murphy earned his B.A. in English from Rutgers University, and has held jobs as an apartment cleaner, a bookseller, and working on open steel construction sites 30 stories up on Manhattan skyscrapers. He and his family live in Maplewood, New Jersey.