Ramachandra guha is a social historian of environmental change. Trained as a sociologist, he has also been called an anthropologist, ecologist, journalist, and historian. Born in Dehradun, India, in 1958, Guha studied at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and took his doctorate at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. Between 1985–95 he held academic positions in India, Europe, and North America. Since 1995 he has been a full-time writer based in Bangalore, India.

Ramachandra Guha's first book, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (1989), is a social history of the Himalayan forests, from the 19th century to the Chipko movement in the 1970s and 80s. This seminal study [Page 834]explores the intersection of ecology, social structure, and peasant politics. Guha shows how ...