Anthony Esher has taught history at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, for most of his sixty-odd years. But he has also lived in many parts of the United States, accumulated several years of living and travel in Europe, and visited every inhabited continent several times. He spends a minimum of three months overseas each year, sampling the wine, exploring the streets and the ruins, and checking to see if the rainforests are still there. Esler's books reflect his enthusiasms. These include a fascination with generational conflict nurtured in the streets of the sixties, a passion for story-telling, and a preference for panoramic "big picture" history-like The Human Venture.