Joseph Kelly was born in New York, went to school in Houston, Dallas, and Austin, and now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where he teaches literature and Irish studies at the College of Charleston. His first book, "Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon," recounts history of James Joyce's influence on American culture, including the famous trial, The United States v. One Book Called "Ulysses." "America's Longest Siege," a History Book Club selection, follows the gradual, siege-like spread of the nation's most pernicious idea--that slavery is a positive good for whites and blacks--tracing it from its roots in Charleston till it invested nearly the entire South. Currently he is writing a book on the forgotten heroes of the Jamestown settlement, the dissenters, mutineers, and rebels who first experimented with the ideals of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.