Philip Derrick was brought up as an Air Force brat before disappointing his father by joining the Army. He is a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and has a Ph.D in Education/History from the University of Idaho. He currently lives (after a decade in Texas) in the Cascade Mountains an hour away from Seattle, teaches high school history, and watches the deer pass by his living room window on a daily basis. In his study are more that 1,000 books, none of which his spouse allows outside the room since he leaves them lying around all over the place.