Charles C Mann's most recent book, 1491, won the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Keck award for the best book of the year. A correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Science, and Wired, he has covered the intersection of science, technology, and commerce for many newspapers and magazines here and abroad. In addition to 1491, he has co-written four other books: The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics,The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition, Noah's Choice: The Future of Endangered Species, and @ Large: The Strange Case of the Internet's Biggest Invasion. He has also written for HBO and the television show Law and Order.

Richard Rodriguez, a journalist and writer, is the author of an autobiographical trilogy that examines, respectively, class, ethnicity, and race in America. He is finishing a book on the "ecology of monotheism"--the influence of the desert for the experience of God for the Jew, the Christian, and the Muslim.