Don Braden has been an English teacher in Barstow, California, for 34 years. He has no plans for retirement. "Teaching is simply too much fun to think about leaving the classroom."
The curriculum for The Postman is only the latest novel he has developed for use in his classes. After discovering David Brin from reading Glory Season, Braden read Brin's output chronologically to see if there was a change of attitude in his stories from before the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War thawed. "There wasn't one [change of attitude]," Braden says; "Brin writes about themes that transcend humanity unencumbered with the petty squabbles of individual nations."