An internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends, JOEL KOTKIN is the author of the widely acclaimed, best-selling book, THE NEW GEOGRAPHY, How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape, which was published in paperback in October 2001 by Random House.

Kotkin is a Senior Fellow at the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica.

For three years, he was Business Trends Analyst for KTTV/Fox Television in Los Angeles where, in 1994, he won the Golden Mike Award for Best Business Reporting on the changing dynamics of the entertainment industry.

Mr. Kotkin wrote the highly-acclaimed monthly "Grass Roots Business" column in the New York Times' Sunday Money & Business section for nearly three years. He is currently a columnist with Reis.com, and a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion Section. For five years he served as West Coast editor for Inc. Magazine and continues to contribute on a regular basis. His work has also appeared in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes ASAP.

He is the author of four other books: TRIBES: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success In the New Global Economy, (Random House, 1993) which traces the connection between ethnicity and business success -- how in-group loyalties are becoming the driving force in the new global economy. TRIBES has been published in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and German. He co-authored THE THIRD CENTURY -- America's Resurgence in the Asian Era, (Crown,1988). This title was translated into Japanese and Chinese, with a special English edition published for the Pacific Rim.

His first book, CALIFORNIA, INC. (Crown,1982) dealt with California's links to the emergent powers of the Pacific Rim. Kotkin's novel, THE VALLEY, was published in 1983 by Bantam Books.

A history of Cities from the earliest settlements to the present is the subject of Kotkin's next book, to be published by Modern Library, a division of Random House.

Mr. Kotkin lectures widely in the United States, Japan and Europe and has addressed both Democratic and Republican Congressional groups. He has testified before the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress, the State of California Economic Strategy Panel and is highly sought after as a speaker by major business and financial organizations.

Mr. Kotkin attended the University of California, Berkeley. A native New Yorker, he has been living in California since 1971. Mr. Kotkin has a daughter, Ariel, and lives in North Hollywood, California.