Kate Brown’s research interests illuminate the point where history, science, technology, and bio-politics converge to create large-scale disasters and modernist wastelands. She has written four books about topics ranging from population politics, linguistic mapping, the production of nuclear weapons and concomitant utopian communities, the health and environmental consequences of nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster to narrative innovations of history writing in the twenty-first century. She is a Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in History of Science, Program in Science, Technology and Society, MIT. She teaches environmental history, Cold War history, and creative non-fiction history writing. Her book Manual for Survival was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.