Miles Harvey began reporting on Gilbert Bland in 1996 for Outside. He spent over a year on the magazine article and three more years on the book. He has worked for UPI, In These Times, and Outside, where he was the book-review columnist. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (B.S. in Journalism, 1984) and the University of Michigan (M.F.A. in English, 1991), he has had a lifelong fascination with maps.