About the Author

Ernesto Rois-Mendez holds degrees in economics and aerospace engineering, a pairing that shaped this book, an economist's questions answered with an engineer's insistence on measurement.

His professional career began in 1979 at McDonnell Douglas and ran through Bell Helicopter to the aviation company he founded and led for three decades, serving customers in nineteen countries.

He also founded the Latin American Aeronautical Association (ALA – Asociación Latinoamericana de Aeronáutica) and published its monthly magazine, ALA, in Spanish and Portuguese for nineteen years, reaching more than ten thousand readers in thirty-five countries, work that taught him how to make technical subjects clear to busy people. He holds a United States patent, is a licensed pilot, and has published in Americas Quarterly and other industry magazines.

He has carried the question at the center of this book since the early 1970s, watching a force no statement discloses work on his own savings alongside everyone else's; partial retirement finally gave him the time to write it down. He lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Elizabeth.