Nigel CliffNigel Cliff is the author of The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America; The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco da Gama; and Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story--How One Man and His Piano Trasformed the Cold War and is the translator and editor of Marco Polo's Travels. His books have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, named Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and translated into a dozen languages. He has written widely for The Times of London, The Economist, The New York Times Book Review, and other publications. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Geographical Society and holds the degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Oxford.