William Friar grew up in Panama near the banks of the Panama Canal. This is his third Panama-related book; he also authored an ecotourist guidebook, Adventures in Nature: Panama. and a photo-essay book, Portrait of the Panama Canal.

Bill began his writing career as a stringer for the metro desk of the New York Times, where he found that covering stabbings, shootings, blizzards, and hockey parades was surprisingly good training for travel writing. He has worked as a rock-music critic, a tech-news editor at CNET, a human biology instructor, a writing coach, a fundraiser for a medical foundation, a software-manual author, and a reporter for three daily newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bill's work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Arizona Republic, Neuen Zurcher Zeitung, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register, and Houston Chronicle, among other publications. His travels have taken him to more than 60 countries on five continents, including a year stint in India doing international development work.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Bill also holds an M.A. in English and American Literature from Stanford and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University. He lives in San Francisco. More information about Bill's Panama guides can be found at his website, www.panamaguidebooks.com.