Cultural Diversity Roster

Linden has spent his entire writing career exploring various aspects of one question: After hundreds of thousands of years, how has one small subset of our species reached a point where its fears, appetites, and spending habits control the destiny of every culture, ecosystem, and virtually every creature on earth? With his unfailing humor and well-earned reputation as “a well-versed guide to complex ecosystems and remote cultures” (The New Yorker), Linden enthralls audiences and invites them to begin scratching at this question and other important questions around climate and environmental issues. Additionally, his expertise extends into the future trends of our world, including overpopulation, the widening gap between rich and poor, the resurgence of infectious disease, and the effects of a changing global climate.

Linden has covered nearly every major environmental issue in publications ranging from Foreign Affairs, TIME, Parade, and Oprah. He has earned multiple awards for his work, including a Citation for Excellence by the Overseas Press Club for his story “The Rape of Siberia”, the Harry Chapin Media Awards for Best Periodical (1994), and Global Media Award for Best Periodical by the Population Institute (1994), both for his story “Megacities”. He also received two Genesis Awards for writing on the subject of animals for his articles “Can Animals Think?” (1995) and “Doomed”. He received a Yale University Poynter Fellowship in 2001, the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism from the American Geophysical Union, and the Grantham Prize Special Award of Merit in 2007.

His first book, Apes, Men and Language, was published nearly 40 years ago. Since that first book, Linden has revisited and explored animal thinking in several books and many articles. In Silent Partners: The Legacy of the Ape Language Experiments, he looked at what happened to the animals themselves in the aftermath of the experiments treating them as personalities and commodities.

In the 1990s, it occurred to Linden that, if animals could think, maybe they did their best thinking when it served their purposes. Out of this came The Parrot’s Lament: Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence and Ingenuity, and The Octopus and the Orangutan: More Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity. While making efforts to understand how we have come to rule the planet, Linden developed thoughts on the nature and origins of consumer societies in Affluence and Discontent: The Anatomy of Consumer Societies (1979), The Alms Race: The Impact of American Voluntary Aid Abroad (1976), and The Future in Plain Sight: Nine Clues to the Coming Chaos (1998). In The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands and Indigenous Peoples Meet  (2011), Linden tells the story of the inexorable expansion of the consumer society through vignettes and stories.

Over the years, it has become clear to Linden that the threat of climate change trumps every conservation issue. The various aspects of this existential threat inspired The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations.

In addition to his successful writing career, Eugene Linden pursued an active career in the world of finance, and previously served as a chief investment strategist for Bennett Management, a family of funds that invests in distressed companies.  Currently, he serves on several nonprofit boards and advisory committees.