Nicholas A. Basbanes is the author of eight books about various aspects of books and book culture. His first, A Gentle Madness, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995, and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. An award-winning investigative reporter during the early 1970s, Basbanes was literary editor of the Worcester Sunday Telegram from 1978 to 1991, and for the next eight years wrote a nationally syndicated column on books and authors. His work on On Paper, a cultural history of paper and papermaking, was supported in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, and will be published in 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf. Basbanes lectures widely on various topics, reviews for the Los Angeles Times, and writes a featured column for Fine Books & Collections magazine. He and his wife Constance live in Massachusetts.