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Kathleen Dalton is Cecil F.P. Bancroft Instructor of History at Phillips Academy Andover and an external fellow of Boston University's International History Institute. Author of *Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (2002)* and *A Portrait of a School: Coeducation at Andover (1986)*, she has spoken widely about Theodore Roosevelt, including appearances on *C-SPAN's Book TV, the History Channel, the Arts and Entertainment Channel*, and public television; her writing has appeared in numerous newspapers. She is currently working on her next book, *The White Lilies and the Iron Boot*; a story of four friends (including Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt) and their attempts to shape U.S. foreign relations during a dangerous time.

Douglas L. Wilson, co-director, with Rodney O. Davis, of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, is the author of *Lincoln before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years* (1997); *Herndon's Informants: Letters and Interviews about Abraham Lincoln* (1998); and *Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln* (1998), which was awarded the Lincoln Prize for 1999, and *Herndon's Lincoln* (2006).

John Dean was legal counsel to US President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, and his testimony before Senate investigators convinced many Americans that Nixon was closely involved in the criminal activities that eventually led to his resignation from the presidency. Dean started his legal career in Washington in the late 1960s, as the chief minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee. He then served as an associate deputy in the Attorney General's office before being appointed as White House counsel. In his testimony before the Senate committee, Dean claimed Nixon knew about the 1972 break-in at the national headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and had helped to cover it up. Dean's supporters saw him as courageous and truthful; his detractors saw him as self-serving and disloyal. The law saw him as guilty of obstruction of justice, and Dean was sentenced to four months in prison for his role in the scandal (he spent the four months under a "witness protection" program). Dean went on to write books about his experiences in the Nixon White House, including *Blind Ambition (1976)*, which became a made-for-TV movie. Since then he has worked as an investment banker in California and written columns, essays and books on subjects as varied as President Warren G. Harding and Supreme Court justice William Rehnquist. In 2004 he emerged as an outspoken critic of the administration of George W. Bush and published the book *Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. *

After graduating from Stanford University in 1950, I worked for *Mademoiselle* magazine in New York City, returning to California to be married and to continue magazine and newspaper writing while my children were young. After the birth of my third child, I enrolled at Claremont Graduate School where I earned a Ph.D. in History in 1966. I went with my family to Paris in 1966-67, studying French and preparing articles from my dissertation, "An American in Paris: The Career of an American pamphlet in French Revolutionary Politics, 1787-89." Coming back to the United States, I began teaching at San Diego State University. I spent 1970 and 1971 in London doing research on my book, *Ideology and Economic Thought in Seventeenth-Century England*, which won of the 1978 Berkshire Prize. I returned with my family to Cambridge, England, in 1977 and 1978 where I was a Fellow Commoner at Churchill College. In 1980 I was named to the Council of the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, acting as chair from 1983 to 1986. I have also served on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review and the William and Mary Quarterly. In 1992 Harvard University Press bought out a collection of my essays, as "Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination" and in 1994, I published with Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob *Telling the Truth about History*. In 2000, Harvard University Press published my study of early nineteenth-century America, "Inheriting the Revolution: the First Generation of Americans".

Dennis Lehane has written seven novels, *A Drink Before the War*, *Darkness*, *Take My Hand*, *Sacred*, *Gone Baby Gone*, *Prayers for Rain*, *Mystic River* and *Shutter Island*. *Mystic River* was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award and won both the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel as well as the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction given by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Gail Mazur's book, *Zeppo's First Wife: New & Selected Poems*, is winner of the 2006 Massachusetts Book Award, a finalist for the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. She is author of four earlier books of poetry, *Nightfire*, *The Pose of Happiness*, *The Common*, and *They Can't Take That Away from Me*, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award. She is Writer in Residence at Emerson College and Founding Director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series, which she ran for 29 years. She is working on a new poetry collection, *Figures in a Landscape*. Photo credit to Michelle DeBakey.