Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University and the author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. He has written numerous books, including The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Book Review and American Heritage, as well as a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly.