Michael Bess is the Chancellor's Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, where he has taught for three decades. An expert on the technological future, World War II, environmental history, and the challenges facing contemporary global society, he received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and has written five books, including The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000, which won the George Perkins Marsh Prize.