In 1947 Laurence Gonzales was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in Houston and San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of numerous books, including the bestseller "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why" and the sequel, "Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience" (both from W.W. Norton). Gonzales has won many awards, including two National Magazine Awards and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. ^[1] He has appeared as a speaker before groups ranging from the Santa Fe Institute to Legg Mason Capital Management, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has also served as an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University. His most recent novel is Lucy (Alfred A. Knopf). His book about the crash of United Flight 232 at Sioux City, Iowa, July 19, 1989, "Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival," from W.W. Norton, was published on July 7, 2014.

Laurence has spoken to groups including Citibank, ExxonMobil, Legg-Mason Capital Management, Water Street Capital, the Santa Fe Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, the Wilderness Medical Society, the National Geographic Society, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, QuikTrip Corporation, and Search and Rescue of Alaska, as well as the Wildland Firefighters Associations around the country. Previously he presented at the 20th Annual Wilderness Risk Management Conference in Wyoming and a conference for the Navy SEALs in Florida that were very well attended. Also, the Navy Seals and the NFL have both used Deep Survival in their training. Groups have been as small as 20 people and up to 900. In addition to being on the Adjunct Faculty at Northwestern University Laurence is an appointed scholar at the Santa Fe Institute