Ronald Wright was born in England to a Canadian father and an English mother, and now lives in British Columbia. A novelist, historian and essayist, he has won awards in all three genres, and is published around the world in more than a dozen languages. Before becoming a writer, he studied archaeology at Cambridge University and the University of Calgary, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1996. His first novel, A Scientific Romance, won Britain's David Higham Prize for Fiction and was chosen a book of the year by the New York Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and the Sunday Times. His nonfiction books include the number-one bestsellers Time Among the Maya, and Stolen Continents, a history of the Americas that won the Gordon Montador Award and was chosen a book of the year by the Independent and the Sunday Times. Wright is a frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, and has written and presented documentaries for radio and television in Britain, Canada, and the United States. In 2004 he gave Canada’s prestigious Massey Lectures, published as the bestselling book A Short History of Progress.