James Workman, a Yale and Oxford honors graduate, began as an award-winning political and business reporter in Washington, DC before being recruited as a Special Assistant to U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. He focused on Clinton Administration communications, policy papers and speeches on wildland fire, endangered species, climate change, forestry, and dam removal. Moving to Africa in 2000, Workman helped a small team write the landmark Report of the World Commission on Dams; he has written and lectured on water and dams in India, Africa, China, Indonesia and the US, from the art of dam removal, to reinvesting hydropower revenues in floodplains or develop cap-and-trade policies to reduce groundwater over-pumping. For years he lived out of a Land Rover in Africa writing about causes and consequences of water scarcity and tracked the desert siege between Botswana and Kalahari Bushmen. He edited Tsodilo Hills: Mountain of the Gods, a scholarly coffee-table book. Bloomsbury/Walker Press will publish his forthcoming: Heart of Dryness: An intimate story about the end of water. Workman lives with his wife Vanessa and their daughter Camille in San Francisco.