Authors

Paul Aron is director of publications for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Previously, he was a reporter at The Virginia Gazette and executive editor at Simon and Schuster. He is the author of, among other books, We Hold These Truths . . . And Other Words That Made America and Why The Turkey Didn’t Fly. Most recently, Mr. Aron's book, Founding Feuds: The Rivalries, Clashes, and Conflicts That Forged a Nation, was co-published by Colonial Williamsburg and Sourcebooks.

COPYRIGHT © 1973 BY BERNARD ASBELL

Neal Asbury is a global entrepreneur, chief executive of the Legacy Companies, and the host of the nationally syndicated weekly radio talk show Neal Asbury's Made in America, produced by Radio America. He is the author of two books, Conscientious Equity: An American Entrepreneur's Solutions to the World's Greatest Problems and Mapping America: The Incredible Story and Stunning Hand-Colored Maps and Engravings that Created the United States, co-authored with Jean-Pierre Isbouts. Asbury is also a frequent guest on CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and BBC and has published more than two hundred articles on global trade issues. He lives in Weston, Florida.

Aaron Asher (1929-2008) was one of the prominent literary editors during the 20th century, editing works by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Born in East Prussia, Asher immigrated to the United States in the 1930s. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 78.

William Ashworth, who was born and reared ten airline miles from the Snake River, is a free-lance writer and editor of the Sierra Club’s Northwest Chapter newsletter, the Northwest Conifer, aswellas chairman of the Red Buttes Wilderness Council. He is currently at work on a major history of the Hells Canyon region.

Steve Atkinson is a writer and photographer based in Chestertown, Maryland, and the editor of the websites Delmarva Crier and Local in Kent.

Rick Atkinson is the author of dozens of best-selling books on American military history, including The Long Gray Line, a narrative saga about the West Point class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War, and In the Company of Soldiers, an account of his time with General David H. Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has also written a three-part narrative history of the U.S. military’s role in the liberation of Europe in World War II, known as the Liberation Trilogy, and is currently at work on a similar trilogy about the Revolutionary War. 

A frequent writer for American Heritage, Louis Auchincloss was a lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known for his finely wrought novels exploring the private lives of America's East Coast patrician class (especially the world of Wall Street bankers, lawyers and stockbrokers). His dry, ironic works of fiction continued the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton. Gore Vidal said, "Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs.... Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives." Auchincloss attended Yale University, where he was editor of the Yale Literary Magazine, and law school at the University of Virginia.

Ken Auletta is a regular contributor to the The New Yorker . His most recent book, The Underclass , has just been published by Random House.

Phillip H. Ault is associate editor of the South Bend (Indiana) Tribune and the author of, among other works, a book on the opening of communications to the West entitled Wires West (Dodd, Mead, 1974).

Gillian Elise Avery (1926–2016) was a British children's novelist and historian of childhood education and children's literature. She won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1972, for A Likely Lad.

James Axtell is a professor emeritus of history at the College of William and Mary. His specialty is early North American history.  He has also taught at Princeton, Yale and at Sarah Lawrence. Axtell is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago.  

Edward L. Ayers has served as the president of the University of Richmond since 2007, having previously served as the Buckner W. Clay Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at University of Virginia. In 2007, Ayers completed a 15th anniversary of The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. This essay appears in the collection American Places: Encounters With History, edited by William E. Leuchtenburg and published by Oxford University Press in 2002.

A graduate of Princeton University, Colonel A. C. M. Azoy retired from the Army in 1951 after serving in both world wars. His assignments included chief of the Occupational History Branch of the Army's Office of Chief Historian serving in Germany. The books he wrote include Paul Revere’s Horse, West Point Today, and The Army Officer’s Manual.

A newswriter for a Detroit television station, Wm. B. Decker has written extensively on photographic history.

Martha Bacon taught English at the University of Rhode Island, and was the author of the novels, A Masque of Exile and Lament for the Chieftains.

Kendall Bailes of Merriam, Kansas, is a sophomore at Dartmouth College.

Beth Bailey is a social/cultural historian and professor at Temple University. Her research has focused on the history of gender and sexuality and on war and society/military institutions in US history; her most recent book is America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (2009). Her previous books include Sex in the Heartland and From Front Porch to Backseat.  

Professor Bailey has written such books as Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal, A Diplomatic History of the American People , and the recently published The American Pageant .

This article is adapted from Bernard Bailyn’s forthcoming Voyagers to the West , which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in the fall. Dr. Bailyn, a professor of history at Harvard, has won the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes and the National Book Award for previous books.

David Haward Bain is the author of Sitting in Darkness , about Philippine-American relations, which was published last year by Houqhton-Mifflin.

Kevin Baker is an author and journalist whose work frequently covers American history, culture, and sports. His three-part, “City of Fire” historical fiction trilogy—Paradise Alley, Dreamland, and Strivers Row—covers New York from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, and his latest novel, The Big Crowd, is set in the city just after World War II. He is also the author of the history, America, The Story of Us. Residing in New York City, Baker is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, and writes frequently for The New York Times and other periodicals. He is a member of the board of the Society of American Historians.

Jean H. Baker is the author of Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (W. W. Norton 2008) and a professor of history at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. Her two latest books include Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists and Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion.

Wallace C. Baker of Massapequa Park, New York, is publications editor for a Long Island manufacturing concern.

James Wesley Baker, a free-lance writer from Eastover, S. C., specializes in the colonial and Revolutionär): history of the South.

A frequent contributor to AMERICAN HERITAGE , Liva Baker is the author of “With All Deliberate Speed,” dealing with the Supreme Court desegregation laws (February, 1973), and “The Burning of Chambersburg” during the Civil War (August, 1973). She is just finishing a book about the Seven Sister colleges for Macmillan.

Russell Baker was an American writer best known for his satirical commentary and comedic prose. He won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for his "Observer" columns in The New York Times, and won his second Pulitzer three years later for his autobiography, Growing Up. Throughout his distinguished career Baker also edited Russell Baker's Book of American Humor, released in 1993, and hosted the PBS series Masterpiece Theatre from 1993 to 2004.

An Annapolis graduate, Mr. Baldwin began his newspaper career in 1928 with the Baltimore Sun. He joined the New York Times a year later and soon began specializing in military and naval affairs. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1942 for a series of articles on the situation in the South Pacific, and that same year became the Times’ military editor, a position he has held ever since. This article is part of his Battles Lost and Won—Great Campaigns of World War II, soon to be published by Harper if Row. It will be Mr. Baldwin’s sixteenth book. The map on page 85 is adapted from one in The Fall of the Philippines, by Louis Morion, Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army, 1953. COPYRIGHT ©1966 BY HANSON W. BALDWIN

Scott Banks, a lifelong Alaskan, makes his home in Anchorage.

James M. Banner, Jr. holds a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Columbia, where he studied with Richard Hofstadter.  From 1966 to 1980, he was a member of the history department of Princeton University, which he left to found the American Association for the Advancement of the Humanities.

Lance Banning (1942–2006) was an award-winning historian known for his work regarding the U.S. founding fathers. Banning's first book, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology, was a groundbreaking study of the ideas and principles that influenced political conflicts in the early American Republic. His revisionist masterpiece, "The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic," received the Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Phil Barber is a sports journalist and author who has written for Sports Illustrated, the Sporting News, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He has written We Were Champions: The 49ers' Dynasty in Their Own Words, Dale Earnhardt: The Likeable Intimidator, and, most recently, The Official Vince Lombardi Playbook, released in 2009.

James G. Barber, a historian at the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, D. C., is the author of Andrew Jackson: A Portrait Study . Currently he is surveying the portraits of Henry Clay. The views he expresses here are his alone and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the National Portrait Gallery or the Smithsonian Institution.

Al Barkow, a former editor of Golf magazine , is the author of Golf’s Golden Grind and The Golden Era of Golf .

Michael Barkun is a professor in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. His most recent book is A Culture of Conspiracy , published by the University of California Press.

Eric W. Barnes (1907-1962) was a former director of the Institute for American Studies at the Free University of Berlin from 1953 to 1957. Barnes returned to the U.S. to teach at the Loomis School in Windsor, Connecticut. He authored several books in French and English including a series of histories for grade-school students.

Dr. Joseph W. Barnes is city historian of Rochester, New ‘York.

Lincoln Barnett (1909–1979) was an author and editor, most notably at Life Magazine for many years, and is best known for works explaining the world of science to laymen. Barnett wrote a number of books, including "The Universe and Doctor Einstein", "The World We Live In", and "The Treasure of Our Tongue". The Universe and Doctor Einstein is a layman's introduction to the theory of relativity. It includes a foreword by Einstein, and has been reprinted several times. His work popularizing science subjects included consulting work on the film Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Allen Barra is a sports journalist who writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal. He formerly served as an editor for American Heritage, where he wrote about 20th century sports and popular culture. His 2009 book, Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee, was followed by Rickwood Field: A Century in America's Oldest Ballpark in 2010.

Wayne Barrett, who formerly worked at the National Geographic, is now a free-lance writer, based in the Washington area.

David Dean Barrett is a military historian, specializing in World War II. His first book, 140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon, debuted in April of 2020. Mr. Barrett has also published work in WWII Quarterly Magazine, U.S. Military History Review, and Global War Studies, and he has been a frequent guest speaker for more than a decade on the use of the atomic bomb in the final days of WWII and the end of the Pacific War. In addition, he served as the Historical Consultant/Producer for Reda Films' production, "Heroes of the Sky: The Mighty Eighth Air Force," which aired globally on National Geographic in May of 2020. 

An author whose books have won literally dozens of awards, and two of his books have involved him directly in policy-making. The National Academies of Sciences named The Great Influenza: The story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (2004), his study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine, and he was a member of the initial working group which developed recommendations for pandemic preparedness and response. He also served on the federal government's Infectious Disease Board of Experts and has advised the private sector as well as federal, state, and World Health Organization officials on influenza preparedness and risk communication.

Mr. Barsness, who teaches English at the University of Montana, is a Western-history enthusiast who has written several books on the West. This article is excerpted from a book he is now writing on the buffalo. Mr. Bareness’ research has been supported by the Amon Carter Museum and the University of Montana Foundation.