Max Boot is a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also a weekly foreign affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard. His areas of expertise include national security; military technology; military history; U.S. foreign policy; terrorism and guerrilla warfare; terrorism; and the media.

Before joining the Council in October 2002, Mr. Boot spent eight years as a writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal, the last five years as editorial features editor. From 1992-94, he was an editor and writer at the Christian Science Monitor.

His most recent book, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books, 2002), was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor. It also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history. His next book, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today, will be published in October 2006 by Gotham Books, an imprint of Penguin (USA).

He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. He is also a frequent public speaker and guest on radio and television news programs. He has lectured at many military institutions, including the Army and Navy War Colleges, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School, the Army Command and General Staff College, Marine Corps University, and West Point. He is a member of the U.S. Joint Forces Command Transformation Advisory Group.

Mr. Boot holds a Bachelor's degree in history, with high honors, from the University of California, Berkeley (1991), and a Master's degree in history from Yale University (1992). He lives with his family in the New York area.