Roger W. Brucker has been exploring and writing about caves, most notably Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, for seven decades. The Ohio native is a cofounder of the Cave Research Foundation, which oversees the exploration of caves on U.S. federal land and in other countries. His books include "The Longest Cave," "The Caves Beyond," "Grand, Gloomy and Peculiar: Stephen Bishop at Mammoth Cave," and "Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins," which helped to inspire the acclaimed Broadway musical FLOYD COLLINS by Tina Landau and Adam Guettel.