Short (dull) version: I speak regularly to a variety of audiences, from beer conventions to marketing events for Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal; from the Emily Dickinson Museum to the National Business Incubators Association. I also contribute to Fox Business Network, and have written opinion pieces for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. You can also see me in "Modern Marvels: Plumbing" (History Channel); "Ultimate Factories: Budweiser" (National Geographic Channel); "The American Brew" (Florentine Films); and "American Originals: Budweiser" (CNBC). I'm currently writing a history of meat in America (Carnivore Nation: Meat and the Making of Modern America, forthcoming, Harcourt). Longer (perhaps not so dull) version: I wish I could say I were one of those people who started writing novels at age three and finished my first screenplay when I was six. Alas, I'm not that talented (although I did write a truly awful poem when I was seven, about how it was spring and now we would open the windows up and out of doors we would sup). Truth be told, I followed a circuitous route to "authorhood." After flunking out of college (I only lasted a few semesters) in the early 1970s, I spent the next decade working as a cab driver, nanny, motel maid, construction worker, and waitress. Then my back started to give out (nearly everyone in my family has back trouble, and I'm also tall). Waiting tables and pounding nails became impossible, so I returned to college, hoping that a degree would lead to a sit-down job. By the early 1990s I had earned a BLS from the University of Iowa and a PHD in the history of American technology from Iowa State University. My plan worked: I landed a position at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, a job that enabled me to spend more time in a chair and less on my feet. I did much of my sitting, however, in airports, because my husband was still back in Iowa. After six years in Mobile, I decided to give up the airports, leave academia, return to Iowa, and launch a new career writing popular history. I've never regretted that decision. Writing history for ordinary folks is infinitely more satisfying than cranking out a scholarly book that, if I were lucky, six other historians would read. When I'm not writing and researching, I'm either cooking, walking, swimming, or reading. My husband and I have no pets (sorry, animal lovers. Does it count if most of my friends are crazy about animals?) and no children at home. (He has two daughters, but they're long grown and out of the house.) So it's just him, me, and my computer. Which leaves me lots of time for the above mentioned pastimes as well as my true passions: doing history and writing books. But writers are nothing without readers. My sincere thanks for stopping by -- and for making room in your life for books.