About the Author

GREG CRITSER was born in Steubenville, Ohio, and raised in Whittier, California. He received his B.A. in history at Occidental College in Los Angeles and his M.A. from UCLA. Critser has worked as a senior editor at four magazines: California Business, California (formerly New West), Buzz (where he edited an award-winning stable of young Los Angeles writers), and Worth, where he was responsible for the magazine's first National Magazine Award nomination in public interest journalism. His own work has appeared in Harper's, the Washington Post Magazine, the Wall Street Journal , the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Monthly, the New Yorker, and Worth. Critser's acclaimed study of obesity, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, was published in 2003.GILLES MINGASSON grew up in Grenoble, France, and moved to Paris to pursue photojournalism. After arriving in the United States on an assignment, he traveled through Latin America before making Los Angeles his home base. In 2005, his work on Latinos in the United States won him an American Photography Award. His photography can be seen in the National Geographic Traveler guidebooks on Panama, the Dominican Republic, and France. Mingasson's website is www.mingasson.com.California-based JOE YOGERST wrote the updates and sidebars for this edition. He is the co-author of Traveler's Companion Peru and has contributed to a number of National Geographic books including the best-selling 50 States, 5,000 Ideas; Enduring Treasures: National Parks of the World; and Sacred Places of a Lifetime.