Ed Caudill is a retired journalism professor who taught at the University of Tennessee for more than 30 years. He spent summers meandering the country, and beyond, with his two sons, and in the school year he taught editing and history. At UT, his books earned him tenure and ire, being outside the usual academic dreariness of jargon-laden journals that no one read. His numerous books have focused largely, but not exclusively, on American imagination and memory. With co-author and professor emeritus Paul Ashdown, those books have looked at Civil War figures. Caudill's other work have looked at the impact of Darwinism in American culture, from publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 through the 1925 Scopes Trial. He continues to write between road trips around the country, especially to places that offer good fly fishing from Georgia to Alaska.