David W. Brown is a New Orleans-based author whose nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. His other publishers include The Atlantic, Vox, and Foreign Policy. He is an Antarctic expeditioner, an endurance runner, a former Army paratrooper, and a veteran of Afghanistan. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University and holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arkansas at Monticello. His latest book, The Mission, was released earlier this year, and tells the incredible true story of a team of scientists who spent decades convincing NASA to explore Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter, which is believed habitable by extraterrestrial life.