Born in San Diego, Thomas Whigham spent his youth in Baja California, where he learned to distinguish grunion from kelp, and in Central America, where he vaccinated hundreds of Guatemalan and Honduran children in the 1970s. He earned a doctorate in Latin American history at Stanford University in 1985, and afterwards became Professor of History at the University of Georgia, where he teaches today. He served as a Fulbright scholar in Argentina and Paraguay in 1988 and 1992. Whigham has written or edited twenty-two books on the history and culture of Latin American. One study, The Paraguayan War. Causes and Early Conduct, was a CHOICE Academic Title for 2003. From 2004 to 2007 he participated as historical advisor and scriptwriter for “A Guerra Esqueicida,” a documentary film on the 1860s produced for Brazilian television. He is a member of Paraguay’s National Academy of History, co-director of the Jornadas Internacionales de la Historia del Paraguay, and area editor for the Platine countries with the Handbook of Latin American Studies. He also serves on the Advisory Board for Humanidades, the scholarly journal of the University of Montevideo and has also translated medieval Portuguese into modern English for the international Fernão Lopes project.