Due to a miscommunication, it was mistakenly reported that Viking is publishing a newly acquired book from Nathaniel Philbrick about the Battle of Little Big Horn in 2013. That book, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, is coming out from the Penguin imprint this May. The new title Viking has signed, Bunker Hill, is slated for 2013. Philbrick's agent, Stuart Krichevsky, brokered the deal for North American rights with Viking's Wendy Wolf.

In Bunker Hill Philbrick, who won the National Book Award for his 2000 book In the Heart of the Sea (also published by Viking), will write about the build-up to the famous Revolutionary War battle in Massachusetts, focusing on Boston from 1768 to the year of the showdown itself, 1775. In writing about Bunker Hill, which was the bloodiest battle of the war, Viking says Philbrick will show the "cataclysmic nature of how America began" and "the fascinating interplay of ideologies and personalities that provoked a group of merchants, farmers, artisans, and sailors to take up arms against their own country."