Bestselling author, professor, and former football coach, John M. Barry is the author of the prize-winning books The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. A professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Barry is a regular presence on TV news programs, and his writings have appeared in publications ranging from Nature and the Journal of Infectious Diseases to Sports Illustrated and the New York Times.