Lowell Ponte is the co-author (with Craig R. Smith) of numerous books, including Money, Morality & The Machine and The Future Looks Like Baltimore. His diverse background includes being a reporter in Washington, D.C., a legislative aide in the California Assembly, one of two co-owners of a successful Hollywood public relations firm, a consultant and speaker for various corporations and trade associations, and dean of a distance-learning university. He worked for 15 years as a roving editor for Reader’s Digest magazine. He has done reporting in 33 countries from Indonesia and Israel to Communist Cuba. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and many other publications. Ponte, a native of Southern California, hosted radio talk shows in Los Angeles for 17 years. More than 300 radio stations have carried his nationally syndicated radio shows. On television, Ponte worked for four years as commentator and reporter on KCET-TV, the West Coast Production Center of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in Los Angeles. Ponte is author of “The Cooling” (Prentice-Hall), a prophetic investigation of global climate change and environmental modification warfare that has been used as a textbook at the U.S. military’s National Defense College. He is a former futurist for a Pentagon-consulted think tank, where he developed scenarios for exotic kinds of warfare and high-tech terrorism. Ponte, who holds the equivalent of a master’s degree in international relations and a Ph.D. in English, also is founder and President of several organizations, including the Jefferson’s Birthday Committee dedicated to making Thomas Jefferson’s April 13 birthday a “National Holiday for Taxpayers.”