Marilyn Johnson is a former editor and writer for Life, Esquire, and Outside magazines. She is the author of The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries, This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, and Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble. Both The Dead Beat and This Book Is Overdue! received Washington Irving Book Awards.