McKay Jenkins

McKay Jenkins has been writing about people and the natural world for 30 years. His new book is Food Fight: GMOs and the Future of the American Diet (Avery, an imprint of PenguinRandomHouse, 2017).

He is also the author of ContamiNation (Avery, 2016, previously published in hardcover by Random House as What’s Gotten Into Us), which chronicles his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals do to our bodies and the environment.

His book Poison Spring (Bloomsbury, 2014), co-written with E.G. Vallianatos, has been called “a jaw-dropping exposé of the catastrophic collusion between the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] and the chemical industry.” (Booklist, starred review)

His other books include Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness and Murder in the Arctic Barren Lands (Random House, 2005), the true tale of a pair of French Catholic missionaries who were murdered in the Arctic by a pair of Inuit hunters; The Last Ridge: The Epic Story of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division and the Assault on Hitler’s Europe (Random House, 2003) about America’s mountain soldiers during World War II. The White Death: Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche Zone (Random House, 2000) is the true story of five young mountaineers who, after setting out to make the first winter ascent of the highest peak in Montana’s Glacier National Park, were killed in a massive avalanche that led to one of the country’s largest search and rescue missions.

Jenkins is also the editor of The Peter Matthiessen Reader (Vintage, 2000), an anthology of the American nature writer’s finest and most enduring nonfiction work.

Jenkins holds degrees from Amherst College, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and Princeton, where he received a Ph.D. in English.