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Aldis Purs is a "rootless cosmopolitan" having lived in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Ontario, Latvia, Washington D.C., California, and Washington with shorter stints all over the world. He received his B.A. from the University of Florida and his MA and PhD from the University of Toronto. He wrote his dissertation on local government in Latvia from 1918 to 1940. His primary interests by geographical location are the Baltic states, the Soviet Union, nineteenth and twentieth century Europe, modern sub-Saharan Africa, and the collapse of Empires, Europe from 1900 to 1949. He specializes in applying some of the tools of a social historian to tourism, museums, orphans, and popular culture. Purs has published three books and more than a dozen articles on modern Baltic history.  He has taught at seven universities in three countries and was a Research Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C.  His interest in coups began with research for his PhD dissertation and has continued intermittently throughout his career.  At Seattle U, he was finally able to teach a course in the comparative history of coups that he had long toyed with; he hardly expected the course to run during the events of January 6 in Washington DC, and the ongoing Myanmar coup.  He is also Prof. DJ Grumpy and has a weekly, one hour radio show, History as Music/Music as History, on the very small, community radio station, Space 101.1FM.