American historian John Robert McNeill (1954-present) is the son of William H. McNeill. He earned his BA at Swarthmore College and his MA and PhD at Duke University. McNeill joined the faculty at Georgetown University in 1985, and he is dually appointed in the History Department and the Walsh School of Foreign Service. He teaches world history, environmental history, and international history. In addition to receiving two Fulbright Awards, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a MacArthur Grant, McNeill has held leadership positions in the American Society for Environmental History and the American Historical Association. In addition, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academia Europaea.

McNeill is considered a pioneer in the field of environmental history, and his expertise is evident throughout the text as each section calls attention to the environmental and ecological impacts of the expansion and consolidation of human webs. His most well-known book, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2000) contends that fossil fuel usage, population growth, technological changes, and international politics prompted an unprecedented scale of environmental change. This perspective is evident in Part 8.

In 2010, McNeill published Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914, receiving the American Historical Association Beveridge Prize and the Association of American Publishers

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