William W. Warner is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1976; reissued by Little Brown, 1994) and Distant Water: The Fate of the North Atlantic Fisherman (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1983) which was nominated as a distinguished work of non-fiction by the National Book Critics Circle. He formerly was assistant secretary for public service at the Smithsonian Institution.