Jim Robbins, a free-lance journalist for more than thirty years, lives with his family in Helena, Montana. He has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times since 1980, and has written for numerous magazines from Condé Nast Traveler to Smithsonian. He has carried out assignments in Europe, Mongolia, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Yanomami Territory in Brazil and Venezuela, and across North America, especially the Rocky Mountain West. He is the author of four books of non-fiction, and is at work on a fifth. His writing interests include science, the environment, and the human central nervous system. He considers the fact that he has been able to freely indulge his curiosity and get paid for it one of his greatest accomplishments. ^[1]