Richard W. Bulliet, Ph.D., (Harvard University) is emeritus professor of Middle Eastern history at Columbia University. He has written scholarly works on a number of topics: the social and economic history of medieval Iran (The Patricians of Nishapur; Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran), the history of human-animal relations (The Camel and the Wheel; Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers), the process of conversion to Islam (Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period), transportation history (The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions), and the overall course of Islamic social history (Islam: The View From the Edge; The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization). He is the editor of the Columbia History of the Twentieth Century. He has published six novels and coedited The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. He was awarded a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and was named a Carnegie Corporation Scholar.