An Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, Wade Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology, and received his PhD in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among fifteen indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections.

Davis' work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness and The Serpent and the Rainbow, an international bestseller which appeared in 10 languages and was later released by Universal Studios as a motion picture. His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest, Nomads of the Dawn, The Clouded Leopard, Shadows in the Sun, and One River, which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction, Canada's most prestigious literary prize. His most recent book is Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures.