Curtis Wilkie, a native Mississippian, graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1963. He worked for the Clarksdale Press Register in the Mississippi Delta through the rest of the 1960s, during the height of the civil rights movement. A national and foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe for twenty-six years, he has covered eight presidential campaigns and was the paper's Middle East bureau chief from 1984 to 1987. Wilkie is the coauthor, with Jim McDougal, of Arkansas Mischief and has written for many national magazines, including Newsweek and The New Republic. He lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans.