Eric Zencey holds undergraduate degrees in politics and economics and a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy and the History of Science. He is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Historical and Political Studies for the Graduate and International Programs of Empire State College, State University of New York. He teaches Environmental History, Political Theory, and Ecological Economics in the U.S. and abroad, notably in Prague, Czech Republic and Tirana, Albania. He is the author of a widely and favorably reviewed historical novel, Panama (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), which was translated into a dozen languages and was briefly a national bestseller. In 1997 he published Virgin Forest (University of Georgia Press), a collection of essays exploring and criticizing the unsustainable foundations of modern industrial culture. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Lingua Franca, The North American Review, and in various scholarly and literary journals. He has lectured widely on the need for ecological literacy; on the necessity of seeing culture's relationship to nature in long-range historical perspective; on the under appreciated role that thermodynamic science plays in explaining economic activity; and on democratic freedom as a function of ecological resilience, among other topics.