First Explorer, a biography of Frantz Ludwig Michel, a young Swiss humanitarian who in the early 1700s was the first to explore beyond colonial America's Atlantic coast. He created an organization to resettle thousands of European religious refugees to American colonies. This is the first biography of this nearly forgotten change-maker who best the course of history much for the better in early colonial America. The lasting legacy of the young foresighted adventurer is his opening a new continent, joining it to an older one, and moving thousands from one to the other, giving the refugees opportunity, religious freedom, and peace. His movement took on a permanent life of its own in the eighteenth century and eventually evolving into the United States Federal Refugee Resettlement Program of today. 
In 2006, Peter Michael founded Underground Railroad Free Press, North America's top-circulation Underground Railroad news publication. Free Press awards the annual Free Press Prizes for Underground Railroad leadership, preservation and advancement of knowledge, the highest honors in the international Underground Railroad community. Free Press maintains Lynx, the international Underground Railroad community's central registry of Underground Railroad organizations, and Datebook, the community's calendar of events.
Peter Michael attended the University of Maryland on academic scholarships, did his graduate work at Berkeley, and completed a post-graduate fellowship at Princeton. He is the seventh generation of his family since 1768 at Cooling Springs, a historic site near Adamstown, Maryland, now powered entirely by sun and wind.

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