Peter Menzel is a freelance photojournalist known for his coverage of international feature stories on science and the environment. His award-winning photographs have been published in National Geographic, Smithsonian, The New York Times Magazine, Time, GEO, Stern, Le Figaro, Der Spiegal, Paris Match, Focus, Muy Interesante, and El Pais. He has received a number of World Press and Picture of the Year awards.

Faith D'Aluisio is a former award-winning television news producer. She is the editor and lead writer for the book-publishing imprint Material World Books.

The couple lives in the United States in Napa, California. They have four sons: Josh, Jack, Adam, and Evan.

In 1994, Peter Menzel created the bestselling book Material World, A Global Family Portrait (Sierra Club Books). This epic work of photojournalism focused on the material possessions and daily lives of average families around the world. Material World has been excerpted worldwide and is translated into Japanese and German.

This was followed by Menzel and D'Aluisio's first collaboration, Women in the Material World (Sierra Club Books, 1996). This book explored the lives of women around the world, and built upon the documentary work of Material World: A Global Family Portrait to which D'Aluisio contributed. In 1996, Women in the Material World was named one of the year's Ten Best Books for the Teenaged by the New York Public Library.

In 1998 the team published Man Eating Bugs: the Art and Science of Eating Insects, a worldwide look at the human consumption of insects. This critically acclaimed book, a Material World Book imprint distributed by Ten Speed Press, won the 1999 James Beard Award for Reference and Writings on Food.

Menzel and D'Aluisio authored a fourth photographic book about robots and their creators, called Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species (The MIT Press, 2000). The initial robot photo reportage for Stern Magazine in Germany that led to the book Robo Sapiens, was awarded first place for science photography by the World Press Photo 2000 in Amsterdam.

Menzel and D'Aluisio released Hungry Planet: What the World Eats in November 2005. Another around-the-world exploration of average daily life in 24 countries  this time focusing on food  it details each family's weekly food purchases and mealtime rituals. The centerpiece of each chapter is a portrait of the entire family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries accompanied by interviews and detailed grocery lists. The book received the coveted James Beard Best Book Award in 2006 and was awarded Book of the Year from the Harry Chapin World Hunger Media Foundation.

What the World Eats was adapted from Hungry Planet in 2008.

Menzel and D'Aluisio are now working on another world-wide nutrition book to be completed in 2009.