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Judith Jones, vice president and senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf, is the winner of the coveted James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award and editor of culinary luminaries such as Julia Child, James Beard, Madhur Jaffrey, Marcella Hazan, Edna Lewis and Joan Nathan. Jones was the first to espouse the kind of cookbook in which the author encourages and enables the ordinary home cook to create the extraordinary by defining culinary terms, demonstrating techniques, whether it be boning or braising, and by providing explicit directions and detailed explanations. Jones also asked cookbook authors to provide clues to the texture, feel, smell and appearance of the dish as the recipe progresses.

Julian is the food editor for *the Boston Globe*. Julian covers local and national food and dining trends including Boston-area chefs and restaurants, as well as cookbooks published nationally for *the Boston Globe* dining & food section. She also oversees the publication's Wednesday Food section and writes a Food column in *the Boston Globe Magazine*.

Michael Beschloss is an American historian. A specialist in the United States presidency, he is the author of nine books. Beschloss was born in Chicago, grew up in Flossmoor, Illinois and was educated at Eaglebrook School, Andover, Williams College and Harvard University. He majored in political science, working under James MacGregor Burns at Williams, from which he was graduated with Highest Honors, and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School, with the original intention of writing history while serving as a foundation executive. Beschloss is a regular commentator on* The NewsHour* with Jim Lehrer on PBS and is the *NBC News* Presidential Historian. He is a trustee of the White House Historical Association and the National Archives Foundation and he also sits on the boards of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He received an Emmy in 2005 for the Discovery Channel's "Decisions That Shook the World." He has also received the State of Illinois's Order of Lincoln, the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award, the Ambassador Book Prize and the New York State Archives History Award. He has received honorary doctorates from Lafayette College, Williams College, St. Mary's College of Maryland, Saint Peter's College and Governors State University.

Al Hunt, Chairman of the Profile in Courage Award Committee, is Washington executive managing editor of Bloomberg News. He was previously a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered national politics as a columnist and served as Executive Editor of the Washington DC Bureau.

Theodore C. Sorensen, former special counsel and adviser to President John F. Kennedy and a widely published author on the presidency and foreign affairs, practiced international law for more than 36 years as a senior partner, and now of counsel, at the prominent US law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. The former chairman of the firm's International Practice Committee, he has represented US and multinational corporations in negotiations with governments all over the world and advised and assisted a large number of foreign governments and government leaders, ranging from the late President Sadat of Egypt to former President Mandela of South Africa. Mr. Sorensen and his team at Paul, Weiss have advised US corporations on factories in Russia and Africa, pipelines in the Caribbean and Latin America, and disputes in the Middle East and North America, and negotiated on their behalf with government officials at the highest level in dozens of countries. He has advised foreign corporations from five continents on investments in the United States and elsewhere, foreign governments on problems with the World Bank, the United Nations, the U.S. government and foreign investors, and on changes in their respective mining, petroleum, investment and election codes, and constitutions. In 2002, Mr. Sorensen was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Sorensen is on the advisory board of the Foreign Policy Leadership Council, a director of the Council on Foreign Relations (until 2004) and the Century Foundation, a member of the advisory board of the Partnership for a Secure America and an honorary co-chair of the ABA Commission on the Renaissance of Idealism in the Legal Profession. Mr. Sorensen is the author of the 1965 international best seller *Kennedy*, seven other books on the presidency, politics or foreign policy and numerous articles on those subjects in *Foreign Affairs*, *The New York Times* and other publications. As an active figure in the Democratic Party, he has participated in 10 of the last 12 Democratic Party National Conventions and served in a number of governmental, political and civic posts. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, he served on the boards of the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund and the Commission on White House Fellows. He is experienced in the ways of Washington, the United Nations and the multilateral and U.S. financing institutions.

Charles Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he had a traumatic childhood during World War II. In 1954 he emigrated from Yugoslavia with his mother and brother to join his father in the United States. They lived in and around Chicago until 1958. His first poems were published in 1959, when he was twenty-one. In 1961 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and in 1966 he earned his Bachelor's degree from New York University while working at night to cover the costs of tuition. His first full-length collection of poems, *What the Grass Says*, was published the following year. Since then he has published more than sixty books in the U.S. and abroad, twenty titles of his own poetry among them, including *That Little Something* (2008), *My Noiseless Entourage* (2005); *Selected Poems: 1963-2003* (2004), for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize; *The Voice at 3:00 AM: Selected Late and New Poems* (2003); *Night Picnic* (2001); *The Book of Gods and Devils* (2000); and *Jackstraws* (1999), which was named a Notable Book of the Year by *the New York Times*. His other books of poetry include *Walking the Black Cat* (1996), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; *A Wedding in Hell *(1994); *Hotel Insomnia* (1992); *The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems* (1990), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; *Selected Poems: 1963-1983* (1990); and *Unending Blues* (1986).

David Yepsen, 58, spent twenty years as the chief political reporter for *the Des Moines Register*, 33 years as the host of Iowa's top television chat show, and the past six years as its chief political columnist. For a period of three months -- November, December and January -- Yepsen was the first reporter called by presidential candidates. Yepsen is leaving the Register to become the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. Yepsen's influence never really waned. His recapitulation of presidential candidate debates often drove the national coverage. Yepsen had several hobbyhorses. He was a moderate-to-conservative Midwesterner, fiercely protective of the state's seniors and an advocate for economic growth that never seemed to come. As a reporter, he mentored a generation of young scribblers, including *the New York Times*' Jeff Zeleny.

Dolores Huerta is president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which is dedicated to community organizing. She co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez and is also an active member of the Fund for the Feminist Majority. As legislative advocate for the Community Service Organization and the United Farm Workers Union, she was instrumental in passing historic legislation which included securing disability insurance for farm workers, printing voting ballots in Spanish, issuing drivers licenses in the driver's ethnic language, insuring public assistance eligibility for resident immigrants, and legalization for 1 million farm workers under the Immigration Reform Act of l984-85. Huerta has received numerous awards, among them the Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in 1998, the Puffin/Nation Award for Creative Citizenship, the Ohtli award from the Mexican government, the Smithsonian Institution James Smithson Award, and nine honorary doctorates from universities throughout the United States. She was also named one of Ms. Magazine's three most important women of 1997 and Ladies Home Journal's 100 most important women of the 20th Century.