JR McNeill is Professor of History and University Professor at Georgetown University. He has held two Fulbright awards, and research fellowships from Guggenheim, MacArthur, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. His books include The Mountains of the Mediterranean (1992); Something New Under the Sun (2000), winner of two prizes, and listed by the London Times among the ten best science books ever written (despite not being a science book), and translated into nine languages; The Human Web (2003), translated into seven languages; and Mosquito Empires (2010), which won the Beveridge Prize from the AHA; and The Great Acceleration (2016). In 2010 he was awarded the Toynbee Prize for “academic and public contributions to humanity.” He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and former President of the American Society for Environmental History. In 2017 he was elected President of the American Historical Association.