Michael Bess is Chancellor's Professor of History, Professor of European Studies at Vanderbilt University. He is a specialist in twentieth-century Europe, with a particular interest in the social and cultural impacts of technological change. He earned his PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. He is the author of three books: Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II; The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000, which won the George Perkins Marsh prize of the American Society for Environmental History and an Honorable Mention from the Pinkney Prize committee of the Society for French Historical Studies; and Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud: Four Activist Intellectuals and Their Strategies for Peace, 1945-1989. Louise Weiss, Leo Szilard, E. P. Thompson, Danilo Dolci. He has just finished writing a book entitled "Superhuman Civilization: Justice and Identity in a Bioengineered Society." This book project explores the ethical and social implications of new technologies for human biological enhancement.