Adam Blank grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, before attending Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. After college, he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he worked with adolescents in the social service system. A career shift placed him in the film industry, where he worked as a production assistant in documentaries, infomercials, commercials, and feature films. Having had his fill of out-of-control teens and advertising company bigwigs, he moved back to the East Coast and created his own film company, Jigsaw Films. Adam's work in both the social services and the film industry have prepared him for his crowning achievement: this book. His time in the psychological trenches helped him understand the mindset of the average birder, and working with advertising executives thickened his skin enough that he can now withstand a constant onslaught of birding, unfazed and unimpressed.
	Lauren Blank also grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and received her B.A. in East Asian Studies at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. After college, she became a guide for Where There Be Dragons, an organization that leads American teens on cross-country backpacking trips in China. She has also worked for the and taught English in Taiwan. She currently resides in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and is one third of an elite crime-fighting rock-climbing team known as the Climbing Devils. Lauren's fluency in Mandarin Chinese as well as her ability to reach great heights as a climber have allowed her birding skills to soar well above those of the average birder.
	Michael H. Moore was born in Iowa of good stock in the year 1970. At a young age, he was schooled in music and art by his inspired and broadminded kin. As a young man, he forged strength and tenacity through hard labor - and harder drinking - in farm fields and factories across Polk County. After witnessing a few grisly industrial accidents and drinking deep from the cup of moral depravity brewed daily in suburban Iowa, Michael decided it best to flee the bosom of his family and beloved state.