J. R. McNeill is an environmental historian and University Professor at Georgetown University, and a former president of the American Historical Association. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is The Webs of Humankind: A World History (W. W. Norton, 2020, 2 volumes), and is coauthor with Peter Engelke of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).