Miles has been teaching English Composition and American Literature for nearly twenty years, since earning his Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1992, at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, VA. Having helped more than 3,000 students at Reynolds make the transition into college-level thinking and writing, like most any teaching veteran, he developed a few ideas that aren’t adequately represented or played out in the array of traditional textbooks that are currently available. Miles has been a department chair, administered dual enrollment programs in area high schools, helped to develop learning communities linking courses across disciplines, and made articulations with four-year colleges and universities, so he brings some knowledge and experience of how individual disciplines and curricular levels fit together – and more important, how they don’t. Even though he has had a heavy teaching load (three to five writing courses a semester), he has managed to publish a fair amount on composition in edited book collections and journals like College English and Teaching English in the Two-Year College. Actually, come to think of it, he thinks he's been productive as a teacher, scholar, researcher and writer because he has had such a heavy teaching load! What better way to learn about how to teach writing than to teach a whole lot of it – and to constantly refine his approach? And what better way to master the craft of teaching than to be constantly humbled by the sheer challenge of it? So why now, and why Flat World? Miles found himself at mid-career, twenty years in the profession with twenty years to go, and he felt like giving something back to his discipline. Traditional venues for sharing knowledge like scholarly publication or conference presentations can only reach so many colleagues. Developing a conventional textbook to get ideas out there seems like a clunky and compromising strategy. Flat World provides the agility and alacrity he needed, while pushing him to fit his ideas into the needs of the discipline and the demands of the marketplace.