Douglas B. Schaper was born in New York City and raised in Westchester, New York. A graduate of Riverdale Country School, he got his BA from Tufts University in History, focus on China, and his finance degree from NYU Stern School. He has attended as a student or instructor ten colleges and universities. He has traveled to five continents and gone down the Nile with a platoon in the Sudanese Army during the first phase of their civil war. Took a lap with the European 400 Meter champion in 1976, training for the 1976 Olympics, under the watchful eye of David Hemery, Olympic Gold Medal winner in the 400 meter hurdles; played semi-pro soccer on Martha’s Vineyard and in Central Park, NYC; tight end with the Lawyer’s Football League in Central Park with quarterback Phil Coccioletti; softball first baseman and outfielder with the Banker’s League in Central Park. Former member of the Tisbury, MA Town Planning Board. And he has worked for the Smithsonian as an archaeologist’s assistant; as a welder on clam rakes and bulldozer buckets; a laborer and carpenter’s helper constructing the Peachbottom nuclear power station and laborer on Dartmouth College’s science building; voiceover for a media introduction to the Kiewit Computer Center at Dartmouth; sous chef at Louis’s Tisbury Café, Inventor US Patent #5,934,397; a broker at Drexel Burnham Lambert; pollster on the 1976 Carter Presidential Campaign for Cambridge Survey Research; shoe and shirt salesman at Paul Stuart; in fashion photography and venture capital in NYC and in film production on major motion pictures; with W. Edwards Deming on development economics and at John Seago and Tony Parkinson’s bongo-trapping operation in the Aberdare mountains in Kenya. A lifelong nature lover, Doug is a dedicated ornithologist and devoted environmentalist. When not reading or writing, he can be found working on his gardens while also developing his skills in woodworking, masonry—wet and dry—and welding on his home. This is his first book.