He attended Harvard from which he graduated with a BA as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1962.
His book The Camel and the Wheel (1975) brings together his interest in the histories of technology, animal domestication, and the Middle East, dealing for example with the significant military advantage early Muslim armies gained from a slight improvement in the design of cloth camel saddles.
[3] He would return to the history of animal domestication with his Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (2005).
[4] He has also written several novels which draw on his knowledge of international politics and the Middle East, and is a promoter of the validity of comics as an art form.
[5] Bulliet's commentaries and opinion pieces on the Middle East have appeared in The Guardian,[6] New York Times International Edition,[7] and Süddeutsche Zeitung.