America 24/7

Rick Smolan
David Elliot Cohen

Rick Smolan
A former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer, Rick Smolan co-founded the best-selling "Day in the Life..." photography series. Smolan and his partner Jennifer Erwitt are also the co-founders of Against All Odds Productions, which specializes in the design and execution of large-scale global projects that combine compelling story-telling with state-of-the-art technology. Their projects have been featured numerous times on the covers of magazines around the world including Fortune, Time, Newsweek, Asia Week and US News & World Report.

From Alice to Ocean: Alone Across the Outback was the first illustrated book to include an interactive CD-ROM disc. The San Francisco Chronicle called it, "a stunning, addictive and mesmerizing experience that may well change the course of publishing forever." In 2005 Actress Helen Hunt will be starring in a Disney movie based on the book.

Passage to Vietnam: Through the Eyes of 70 Photographers, a large-format illustrated book and a CD-ROM, was created in partnership with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Interval Research. The New York Times described Passage as, "the most beautiful CD-ROM ever".

24 Hours in Cyberspace: Painting on the Walls of the Digital Cave, was the largest online event ever to take place in a single day. ABC's Ted Koppel devoted an entire evening to 24 Hours on Nightline, and the project was also featured on the cover of US News & World Report.

One Digital Day: How the Microchip is Changing Our World was produced in conjunction with the celebration of Intel's 30th anniversary. The book was featured on the cover of Fortune magazine and in a 30-page excerpt. CNN also ran a TV special about the making of the project.

The Planet Project: Your Voice, Your World, was the largest Internet poll of the human race ever conducted. Over 1.5 million people from over 240 countries participated in real time over a 4 day period by answering a series of questions exploring what it's like to be a human being at the beginning of the Millennium. In addition, 500 'Planet Pollsters' were dispatched around the world to conduct the poll in remote regions of the globe to insure that the opinions of people who do not have access to technology were also included.

Against All Odds Productions is located in Sausalito, CA.

David Elliot Cohen
Former speaker-at-large of the Yale debate team, bestselling author and editor, David Elliot Cohen has written, co-authored or edited 20 large-format illustrated books - eight with Rick Smolan - that have collectively sold more than 3.5 million copies.

The "Day in the Life..." series, originally created by Cohen and Smolan, is the nation's best-known, most well-respected photography book series. Cohen directed or co-directed 11 of the 15 titles in the series. For each installment in the series, he brought together the world's top photojournalists and coordinated a synchronized, one-day photo shoot across an entire nation-or even a continent.

Cohen's most recent book, A Day in the Life of Africa deployed 95 photojournalists from 23 countries throughout Africa. In a single 24-hour span, these photojournalists shot more than 50,000 images and 100 hours of videos depicting the Africa's vibrant people, landscape and culture.

Three of Cohen's books are New York Times bestsellers: Christmas in America, A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union and A Day in the Life of America, which sold more than 1.3 million copies, rose to #1 and remained on the New York Times list for more than a year. Several other Cohen titles were national and international bestsellers, including his charming travelogue, One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with our Children.

Cohen has garnered numerous awards including the Innovation in Photography Award from the American Society of Media Photographers, several National Press Photographers Association and World Press Photo Awards, a National Jewish Book Award for The Jews in America, the American Jewish Committee's humanitarian award for A Day in the Life of Africa, a Catholic Press Association Award for The Circle of Life and a silver medal from Spain for A Day in the Life of Spain. He was made a literary laureate of the San Francisco Public Library for One Year Off.

Cohen has appeared often on The Today Show, Good Morning America and other national news programs. He has been profiled in The New York Times, People and other major periodicals. He is particularly proud of three books he produced and published on a pro-bono basis: 15 Seconds: The California Earthquake of 1989, which raised more than $600,000 for victims of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; Requiem for the Heartland, which raised nearly $300,000 for 1996 Oklahoma City bombing victims; and A Day in the Life of Africa (2002), which benefits AIDS Education programs in Africa.