Charlie Wing received his Ph.D. in oceanography from MIT, where he later worked as a research scientist. Since then his career has been explaining how things work--teaching physics at Bowdoin College, founding America’s first two do-it-yourself house-building schools (the Shelter Institute and Cornerstone), hosting a PBS series on energy conservation, and writing a dozen top-selling books on home building, home maintenance, and remodeling. Wing lived aboard a cruising sailboat for six years, during which time he wrote the first edition of this book on a solar-powered Macintosh computer. He is the author of four other IM books.