The coming of age of Oby Brooks, an intelligent though accident prone young man struggling with how and where to point his adolescent energies after he burns down his house.

Ben was born in 1977 and lives in Reno, Nevada with his wife and two daughters. His writing has appeared in a variety of literary publications and earned a Nevada Arts Council Fellowship and a Sierra Arts Foundation grant. He is the lead author of Nanotechnology: Understanding Small Systems (CRC Press), the first-ever comprehensive college textbook on nanotechnology, now in its 3rd edition, and also Nanotechnology: The Whole Story (CRC Press), a general audience book.

He studied engineering and journalism in college and has a masters degree in mechanical engineering. He¿s worked as a business analyst, a newspaper reporter, a teacher, and a scientist at various labs, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory and NASA¿s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (More about this work can be found here.) Since 2004 he has been the Principal Engineer at Nevada Nanotech Systems.