For the past twenty years Larry Minear has worked as a researcher on international and internal armed conflicts, interviewing aid workers, soldiers, and local populations in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. he former director of the Humanitarianism and War Project at Brown and then at Tufts University, he is the author, co-author, or editor of several dozen research monographs and fourteen books, including (with Ian Smillie) The Charity of Nations: Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World. He retired in 2006 and resides in Orleans, Massachusetts.