Historian Robert O. Collins was born in Waukegan, Illinois on April 1, 1933. He received a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth in 1954 and went on to receive numerous other degrees in history including bachelor's and master's degrees from Oxford University in 1956 and 1960 and a master's degree and a doctorate from Yale University in 1958 and 1959. He became interested in Africa in the 1950's and spoke Arabic fluently. He taught at Williams College in Massachusetts and at Columbia University in New York before settling at UC Santa Barbara in 1965. Before his retirement in 1994, he served as dean of the graduate division for ten years. Afterwards, he continued to teach, write and mentor. He… wrote or co-wrote over 25 books and numerous articles throughout his lifetime. In 1984, Shadows in the Grass: Britain in the Southern Sudan, 1918-1956 won the John Ben Snow Foundation Prize for the best book in British studies. Because he was considered an expert on Africa's Upper Nile Valley, particularly Sudan, the United States government sought his insight on the conflict in Darfur and on Osama bin Laden and filmmakers asked his advice in depicting the region on screen. Controversy surrounded Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, a book written by Collins and J. Millard Burr in 2006. In order to avoid a defamation lawsuit in the U. K., Cambridge University Press apologized to a wealthy Saudi mentioned in the book, paid a settlement, and destroyed all unsold copies of the book. Collins died from cancer on April 11, 2008.