Colin Woodard of Freeport has had a pretty spectacular few years by anyone’s reckoning. He is an award-winning investigative journalist at the Portland Press Herald, winning the 2012 George Polk award for education reporting, and this year, was named Maine Journalist of the Year.

Woodard began his career as a foreign correspondent, working for dozens of publications until being hired by the Press Herald. He covered environmental issues as well as conflicts around the world, and has reported from more than 50 countries.

But unsatisfied with these laurels — who would be? — Woodard began to write books. His first book, written in 2000, was an extension of his environmental reporting, a narrative nonfiction account of the destruction of the world’s oceans, called “Ocean’s End: Travels Through Endangered Seas”. Woodard traveled to numerous places around the world to report on the oceans for the book, including the ice shelves of Antarctica, the coral reefs of Belize, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and the tiny atolls of the central Pacific Ocean. Witnessing both the deterioration of the world’s most important natural resource as well as the impact the loss of the ocean environments have on the lives of people in the regions, Woodard points out the ways the oceans are in trouble, but also the ways they can be saved.

His second book, “Lobster Coast”, in 2004, is a book about the cultural and environmental history of Maine. “It explains why we separate into natives and people from away,” Woodard said, “as well as why we have a suspicion of all things Massachusetts.” A Maine native himself, Woodard implores us in the book to hang on to our unique heritage, and maintain our sense of community, in spite of all the pressures to change and become more “American”. “It’s like American Nations in microcosm,” Woodard said. But more about “American Nations” in a bit.

The next book was “Republic of Pirates,” written in 2007. It was made into a successful NBC show during the summer, called “Crossbones”. The book is about the history of piracy in the Carribbean, and was recently named to the New York Times bestseller list for travel books.

“Travel books? It’s not a travel book, is it?”

“No,” Woodard laughed. “It isn’t.” He went on to explain how publishing tags sometimes put a book on unusual shelves in the library and in the bookstore. “If you went to look for it at a bookstore, it would likely be near books about the Bahamas and Haiti,” he said. But tagging the book a travel book got him a New York Times bestseller, so he’s not complaining.

Woodard also said he got a consultancy to work for a video game company to help them make their new game, “Assassin’s Creed 4”, which is about pirates, historically accurate.

And then there’s “American Nations”, which came out in 2011. In it, Woodard dissects American society into 11 unique regional “nations” that are often at odds with one another, and certainly have different ways of looking at their mutual larger nation and the world. Because they do, what “American values” are varies with the part of the country you’re in. This leads to obvious political distinctions, and even basic differences in the notion of what is the best balance between the public good and individual freedom, the role of religion in public life, and whether business and industry should be regulated.

“American Nations” was a viral hit. Although it did well enough initially, it got picked up by a Washington Post blog, which printed excerpts. The blog was getting several million hits. Since then, Woodard has been innundated by requests for speaking engagements across the country, interviews with major news outlets in the U.S. and around the world, and a request to appear on a panel in a conference in Morocco last October.

Woodard is currently on partsabbatical, writing the sequel to “American Nations”, which is expected to be out in 2016 by Viking Press.

Woodard also published a series in the Press Herald this year on the Passamaquoddy tribe’s enormous struggles as part of Maine, called “Unsettled”. It ran for 29 consecutive days on page one; anyone who has not yet read it should get a copy, available through the Press Herald via Kindle and other e-readers. Because of its serial nature, it is unlikely to be a print book. “It’s amazing what people don’t know about what happened to the Passamaquoddy here,” he said. “A lot of the history is just tragic.”

Woodard says that he has additional series in mind after he finishes the sequel and returns full time to the paper.

In some ways, he acknowledges, he misses his foreign correspondent days. But he has other obligations now. He is married to Sarah Skillin Woodard, and a couple of years ago, bought a home in Freeport. “Yes,” he says, “and then there’s my four-year-old son, Henry. The life of a foreign correspondent doesn’t mesh with the needs of a four-year-old. I can’t just run off to eastern Europe for a couple of weeks anymore.”

ghamilton@timesrecord.com

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