Kai N. Lee is Rosenburg Professor of Environmental Studies, emeritus, at Williams College, and program officer for science at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Kai was trained as an experimental physicist at Columbia and Princeton Universities. He taught environmental studies and political science at the University of Washington before going to Williams to direct its Center for Environmental Studies. In both institutions, he taught the introductory course in environmental studies that forms the basis of this book. Kai is the author of Compass and Gyroscope (Island, 1993), a book on adaptive management that has been widely used in graduate courses in environmental science. In his… grant making at the Packard Foundation, Kai is developing related means of linking knowledge with action. He has served on more than a dozen committees of the National Research Council, advising government agencies on a range of policies where scientific issues play a critical role. He is currently vice-chair of the NRC's committee to advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Earlier in his career Kai was a White House Fellow and he represented Washington state on the Northwest Power Planning Council.