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Steve Berry lives on the Georgia coast, and though he no longer practices law, he's still active in local politics, having served on the Camden County Board of Education and currently serving as one of five members of the Camden County Board of Commissioners. Steve has been writing since 1990, and though his undergraduate degree is in political science it was Steve's long time interest in history that led to him writing international suspense thrillers. Stories with a little bit of history, secrets, conspiracies, international settings, action and adventure were the kind of books Steve liked to read, so naturally they became the kind of books he liked to write.

Clarissa Hunnewell is a trustee at the Boston Athenaeum.

Professor Engell's interests center mainly upon British literature from 1660 to 1830, comparative Romanticism, criticism and critical theory, and German and English literature from 1750 to 1830. Representative publications include *Forming the Critical Mind: Dryden to Coleridge* (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); *Coleridge: The Early Family Letters* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); T*he Committed Word: Literature and Public Values* (Penn State Press, 1999); and *"Romantische Poesie: Richard Hurd and Friedrich Schlegel," in Archiv fur das Studium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen (1993): 6-17 and Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money* (University of Virginia Press, 2005).

Charles Ansbacher holds titled positions with orchestras in Boston, Moscow, Sarajevo, and Bishkek. His primary relationship is with The Boston Landmarks Orchestra, which he created in 2000 as a gift to his home community. Among recently highly acclaimed performances, he conducted *Beethoven's Ninth Symphony* in Harvard University's Sanders Theatre with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the same work he performed in Belgrade with American and Russian soloists. As the first American to appear on stage after the Kosovo-related NATO bombing of Serbia.Beyond music, Charles Ansbacher applied art to public policy making when, as a White House Fellow, he was co-chair of the U.S. Department of Transporation's Task Force on the Use of Design, Art, and Architecture in Transportation.

Todd Sills worked in Production on TV shows such as *The 2008 Teen Choice Awards* and *America United: In Support of Our Troops* and the movie *Red Without Blue*.

Christopher Eric Hitchens is an author, journalist and literary critic. He has been a columnist at *Vanity Fair*, *The Atlantic*, *World Affairs*, *The Nation*, *Slate*, *Free Inquiry*, and a variety of other media outlets. Hitchens is also a political observer, whose books the latest being *God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything* have made him a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. In 2009 Hitchens was listed by *Forbes* magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in U.S. media." In 2007, on his 58th birthday, retaining his British citizenship, Hitchens also became an American citizen after residing in the US for a quarter century. Hitchens is known for his ardent admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and for his excoriating critiques of Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Henry Kissinger, amongst others. He is an anti-theist, and he describes himself as a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason. In September 2008, he was made a media fellow at the Hoover Institution. Hitchens is currently writing his memoirs, due for publication in the spring of 2010.