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Ben Shahn was one of the foremost Social Realist artists of the 1930s. Shahn was born in 1898 in Kovno, Lithuania, the first of five children of a traditional Orthodox Jewish family. His father was a woodcarver and cabinetmaker. As Eastern European Jews during the period, they faced discrimination and violence everywhere they turned. When the Russian Revolution of 1917 declared war on all forms of anti-Semitism, Jews instinctively turned toward the new government.

Walter Piston was an American composer and music theorist. Among Piston's many awards and honors were three New York Music Critic's Circle Awards for his Symphony No. 2, Viola Concerto, and String Quartet No. 5, two Pulitzers, and eight honorary doctorates. He was elected to the American Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A recent series of recordings has precipitated a revival of interest in Piston's work.

Kenneth Feinberg is a Washington, D.C. attorney specializing in mediation and alternative dispute resolution who was appointed Special Master of the U.S. Government's September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Originally from Brockton, Massachusetts, he received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1967 and a law degree from the New York University School of Law in 1970. Before founding his own firm, The Feinberg Group, in 1993, he was a founding partner at the Washington office of Kaye Scholer LLP. Feinberg has served as Court-Appointed Special Settlement Master in cases including Agent Orange product liability litigation, Asbestos Personal Injury Litigations and DES Cases. Feinberg was also one of three arbitrators who determined the fair market value of the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination and was one of two arbitrators who determined the allocation of legal fees in the Holocaust slave labor litigation. He is a former Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia University and currently serves as Lecturer-in-Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the Georgetown Law Center, and the University of Virginia School of Law.

Phil Sharp became President of Resources for the Future on September 1, 2005. His career in public service includes ten terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana, and a lengthy tenure on the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. He will be serving, effective immediately, on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on America's Climate Choices. Born in Baltimore in 1942, Sharp was raised in Elwood, Indiana. After a year at DePauw University, he transferred to Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where he graduated cum laude in 1964. He spent the summer of 1966 at Oxford University and received his Ph.D. in government from Georgetown in 1974.

David Eltis is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History, Emory University. His research interests are the early modern Atlantic World, slavery, and migration - both coerced and free. He is the author of *Economic Growth* and *The Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade* (New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1987) which won the British Trevor Reese Memorial Prize, and *The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas* (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000), awarded the Frederick Douglass Prize, the John Ben Snow Prize, and the Wesley-Logan Prize. He is editor and contributor to *Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives* (Stanford University Press, 2002). He is currently at work on a census of the Atlantic slave trade, a book on slave ship revolts, an analysis of the identity of captive Africans put on board slave ships, and is co-editing the *Cambridge World History of Slavery*.

A professor of history at Indiana University in Bloomington, George E. Brooks is the author of *Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000-1630*, and numerous studies in African and world history.

Esmeralda Santiago was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She came to the United States at thirteen, the eldest in a family that would eventually include eleven children. Ms. Santiago attended New York City's Performing Arts High School, where she majored in drama and dance. After eight years of part-time study at community colleges, she transferred to Harvard University with a full scholarship. She graduated magna cum laude in 1976. In 1977, she and her husband, Frank Cantor, founded CANTOMEDIA, a film and media production company, which has won numerous awards for excellence in documentary filmmaking. Her writing career evolved from her work as a producer/writer of documentary and educational films. Her essays and opinion pieces have run in newspapers like the *New York Times* and the *Boston Globe*, in magazines like* House & Garden*, *Metropolitan Home*, and *Sports Illustrated*, and as guest commentary on NPR's *All Things Considered* and *Morning Edition*. Upon publication of her first book, the memoir *When I was Puerto Rican*, Ms. Santiago was hailed as a welcome new voice, full of passion and authority, by the *Washington Post Book World*. Her first novel, *America's Dream*, was published in six languages, and was an Alternate Selection of the Literary Guild. Her second memoir, *Almost a Woman*, received numerous Best of Year mentions, in addition to an Alex Award from the American Library Association. Her adaptation of the memoir into a film for PBS Masterpiece Theatre, was greeted with critical and audience acclaim and was awarded a George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. Her third memoir, *The Turkish Lover*, has received enthusiastic reviews as an earthy, heartfelt tale of liberation, desperation, and the crippling grip of love. She is also the author of the illustrated children's book, *A Doll for Navidades*. In addition to her literary endeavors, Ms. Santiago is an active volunteer. She is a spokesperson on behalf of public libraries. She has designed and developed community-based programs for adolescents, and was one of the founders of a shelter for battered women and their children. She serves on the boards of organizations devoted to the arts and to literature, and speaks vehemently about the need to encourage and support the artistic development of young people. Her community activism was cited when she received a Girl Scouts of America National Woman of Distinction Award in March 2002 along with Alma Powell and Elizabeth Dole.

Patrick Manning is a professor of World History at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also president of the World History Network, Inc., a nonprofit corporation fostering research in world history. As a specialist in world history and African history, his current research addresses global historiography, early human history, migration in world history, the African diaspora, and the demography of African slavery. Manning was educated at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a BS Chemistry in 1963 and at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he received a MS in History and Economics and a PhD in History in 1969. He was trained as a specialist in the economic history of Africa and went on to explore demographic, social, and cultural patterns in Africa and the African diaspora. Patrick Manning taught at Northeastern University from 1984-2006, where he directed the World Victory Center and twelve PhD students in world history. He also served as vice president of the Teaching Division of the American Historical Association from 2004-2006.