Jeffrey B. Miller

Book Author with THREE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR (1 from Publishers Weekly; 2 from Kirkus Reviews)

Jeffrey B. Miller has been a writer, editor, and author for forty years. His career includes starting six magazines (city, regional, and national), being editor-in-chief of five inflight magazines, and director of communications for AAA Colorado.

Miller's book career started in 1983 with his first book, Stapleton International Airport: The First Fifty Years, which was published by Pruett Publishing. It was the first history book about a major U.S. airport. Then, in 2000, he developed the idea and was co-author with Dr. Gordon Ehlers of Facing Your Fifties: Every Man's Reference to Mid-life Health (M. Evans & Co., New York, 2002), which was one of only three health books that Publishers Weekly included in its Best Books of 2002.

THREE WWI BOOKS

#1 -- In 2014, after years of full-time research and writing (1984-1988 and 2010-2014), his WWI nonfiction book Behind The Lines (Milbrown Press) was published during the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI. The book detailed the chaotic and complex beginnings of the largest food relief drive the world had ever seen -- where a small band of Americans in the nongovernmental Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) helped save from starvation nearly 10 million Belgians and northern French who were trapped in German-occupied territory.

Behind the Lines earned inclusion in Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2014 and the Kirkus Starred Review stated: "An excellent history that should catapult Miller to the top tier or popular historians." (He's still waiting for the catapult!) Behind the Lines has also received numerous other national recognitions and reviews, including the 2021 Eric Hoffer Best Self-Published Book Award.

#2 -- After an additional three years of full-time research and writing (2015-2018), Miller finished WWI Crusaders (Milbrown Press), which tells the full story of the relief program in one volume. It follows a handful of young Americans who go into German-occupied Belgium, a 22-year-old Belgian woman, two U.S. diplomats, and two Belgians working in the underground.

To honor all those who participated (willingly and unwillingly) in the war, WWI Crusaders was published on Veterans Day Nov. 11, 2018 -- the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

Since then, the book has become one of only 100 self-published books to be included Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2018 and the Starred Review stated: "A tour-de-force history. . .gripping historical narrative. . . A magnum opus that celebrates the qualities of compassion, honor, and humanitarian virtue." It is an eleven-time finalist in eight contests (five national; three Colorado) and winner in four (two national; two Colorado).

#3 -- In 2019, realizing that many general readers might be put off by the size of WWI Crusaders (762 pages), Miller decided to create a concise overview that would be a distillation of all his years of work.

He came up with Yanks Behind the Lines, a 300-page book that tells the CRB story thematically, offering up chapters on every critical component of the relief work, while still interweaving fascinating stories of the men and women working to save a nation trapped behind German lines.

Yanks Behind the Lines was released by international publisher Rowman & Littlefield on October 22, 2020 -- the 106th anniversary of the founding of the CRB. Publishers Weekly Booklife made it an "Editor's Pick." Kirkus Reviews states: "This is a powerful work of history, as informative as it is dramatically gripping. An impressive blend of painstaking historical scholarship and riveting storytelling." Yanks Behind the Lines is currently an eight-time finalist in six contests (four national; two Colorado) and the winner of the Colorado Humanitaries Colorado Book Awards in History.

THE STORY BEHIND THE WWI BOOKS

Miller became interested in this little-known incredible humanitarian relief program when his grandparents told him stories about it. His grandfather was one of the CRB men who went into German-occupied Belgium to supervise the relief efforts, and his grandmother was a 22-year-old Belgian woman who worked on the Belgian side of food relief. When they died in the early 1980s, Miller received an inheritance of all their diaries, correspondence, and photos from the CRB/WWI days.

That set Miller on a path of discovery not only about his family's role in the relief efforts, but also to learn more about the CRB, Belgium, and WWI. He ended up traveling across the country conducting research during multiple decades. Since 2012 he hsas been researching and writing on the topic full time. He has now studied the lives of approximately 50 of the people who participated in the CRB and the Belgian leaders of the food relief. He has also researched those who ran the Belgian underground newspaper, La Libre Belgique (The Free Belgium), and has included their story in WWI Crusaders.

It has become Miller's passion and life's work to make sure America does not forget this tremendous story of heroism and humanity behind German lines.