Authors

Henry Nash Smith, the author of Virgin Land and several books on Mark Twain, is professor of English at the University of California and literary editor of the Twain estate. For further reading: Mark Twain’s America , by Bernard De Voto (Houghton Mifflin, 1951); The Ordeal of Mark Twain , by Van Wyck Brooks (Meridian, 1955).

“Adam Smith” is a pseudo-name that author George J. W. Goodman adopted while writing his 1976 book, The Money Game. It remained a number one bestseller for over a year and was called "a modern classic” by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Samuelson. Goodman pioneered a style of financial writing that made Wall Street more understandable and accessible to the typical investor. Of his many books include Supermoney, Paper Money, Powers of Mind, and The Roaring Eighties. Goodman was a member of the Editorial Board of The New York Times, an editor of Esquire Magazine, and was a founding member of New York Magazine where he nurtured such writers as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, and Gloria Steinem.

Howard Jay Smith is the author of Beethoven In Love; Opus 139 and Meeting Mozart: From the Secret Diaries of Lorenzo Da Ponte, a novel inspired by that missing section of Da Ponte’s memoirs. Smith serves on the board of directors of the Santa Barbara Symphony and is a member of the American Beethoven Society.

Johnny Smith is an assistant professor in the History Department at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on the history of sports and American culture. In 2018 Smith co-authored A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle with Randy Roberts. The book traces Mantle's ascendance as an icon of the 1950s and baseball's place in American culture.

Gene Smith was a notable popular historian and long-time contributor to American Heritage who passed away in 2012 at the age of 83. Smith wrote many biographies of American political and military leaders, including the 1964 New York Times bestseller When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson. Of Mr. Smith’s 19 books, perhaps the next best-known is The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression (1970). He portrayed Hoover as an honest, caring president trapped by circumstances beyond his powers, and also by his own reserve and cautiousness. “President Hoover could not bear to see the bread lines or the thin children so remindful of Europe in the war,” Mr. Smith wrote. “He never went to the relief stations, never turned his head in the car to look at the men selling apples on the street corners.”

—Liz Smith has been a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist since the 1970s.

Hedrick Smith is former Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times and one of the original co-authors of the Pentagon Papers series. In 1972, the New York Times was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their publication of the Pentagon Papers as “a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper through the use of its journalistic resources.” Mr. Smith is the author of numerous books including.... He currently operates an independent nonpartisan website, reclaimtheamericandream.org.

Bradford Smith is the author of Yankees in Paradise , published by Lippincott in 1956, in which the full story of the Yankee influence on early Hawaii is told.

Kathryn Smith is a journalist and writer with a life-long interest in FDR and his circle. She recently authored The Gatekeeper: Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Story of the Partnership That Defined a Presidency, a definite biography of the President's long-time assistant.

Red Smith, the distinguished sports columnist for the New York Times , says that he has much too much respect for the game of golf to play it himself.

Roy C. Smith III grew up on his father’s destroyer. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1934 and served in the Navy for thirty-four years. After retiring from the Navy, he served as director of publications of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association.

Dr. T. Burton Smith served as Ronald Reagan’s personal physician in 1985 and 1986. His memoir, White House Doctor , written with Carter Henderson, will be published this month by Madison Books.

Frederic Smoler has been teaching literature and history at Sarah Lawrence College since 1987, focusing on intellectual and literary history in Europe. He is the Adda Bozeman Chair in International Relations. In addition to his contributions to American Heritage, Smoler also writes for First of the Month, The Nation, and The Observer.

Holley Snaith is a freelance writer and historical researcher. She worked as a researcher and development assistant at the Nixon Foundation, where she helped organize two exhibits. She has also worked as a historian and archivist at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center in Hyde Park, NY where, among other tasks, she organized workshops on Eleanor Roosevelt's life. Ms. Snaith earned a B.A. in American History at the University of Florida, and a Master of Public Administration from the University of West Florida. Her website is www.holleysnaith.com/.

Dean R. Snow is professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany.

Richard F. Snow worked 37 years at American Heritage Magazine, serving as Editor-in-Chief for seventeen of them. Born in New York City, he got a summer job as a mail boy at American Heritage during high school, and after studying English and history at Columbia College, returned to work at the magazine full-time. Snow is the author of several books, most recently A Measureless Peril, about the Battle of the Atlantic. Previously, he authored The Iron Road: A Portrait of American Railroading and Coney Island: A Postcard Visit to the City of Fire, as well as two novels, Freelon Starbird and The Burning, and a narrative poem, "The Funny Place." Snow has also consulted for historical motion pictures—among them Glory—and documentaries, including the Burns brothers’ The Civil War and Ken Burns’s World War II documentary.

Rachel Louise Snyder is a writer, professor and public radio commentator. She is the author of the nonfiction book Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade and a novel entitled What We’ve Lost is Nothing. Her writing has appeared in the the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Slate , Salon , the Washington Post, The Huffington Post , The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post,, as well as the public radio shows This American Life, Marketplace and All Things Considered. She is currently based in Washington, DC, where she is professor at American University. More of her work can be found on her website: www.globalgrit.com.

—Robert Sobel is the Laurence Stessin Professor of Business History at Hofstra University.

Carl Solberg, formerly an editor with Time Inc., is the author of Riding High: America in the Cold War and Oil Power both published by Mason/Charter.

The intriguing history of Mrs. Piper is an excerpt from Robert Somerlolt’sforthcoming book on modern occultism. The book, entitled “ Here, Mr. Splitfoot ,” will be published by The Viking Press later this month.

Ed Sorel’s update of Christian Schussele’s painting Men of Progress ran in the November 1999 issue.

—Nancy Caldwell Sorel is the author of a forthcoming history of women correspondents in World War II.

James Sorensen is a freelance writer from Martinsville, New Jersey. He is currently working on his first novel. Since the author’s visit, the National Park Service has opened the Lacy Plantation to visitors on weekends throughout the summer. At all other times, a pass and directions are available at the Chancellorsville Visitor Center.

Matthew Spalding is the Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government at Hillsdale College and the Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C., campus. He also oversees the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship and the academic and educational programs of Hillsdale as Vice President for Washington Operations. Spalding has published several books on American history and founding principles, including We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future and A Sacred Union of Citizens: Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character. He is also executive editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, a line-by-line analysis of each clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Paul M. Sparrow is a writer, historical consultant, and the former Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Before moving to the FDR Library he was the Deputy Director and Senior Vice President at the Newseum in Washington, DC. He was an Emmy Award-winning documentary and television producer for twenty years. He began his broadcasting career at KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Sparrow also has an MFA from the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College.

Mrs. Elizabeth G. Speare is a native New Englander who lives in Wethersfield, Connecticut. She has written a novel for young people, based on an episode in the French and Indian War, to be published this year by Houghton Mifflin.

Robert Speck attended the Coast Guard Academy and saw sea duty as a deck officer in the Maritime Service.

Ronald H. Spector, a professor of history at the University of Alabama, is currently on leave to serve as director of Naval History for the Department of the Navy. His book Eagle against the Sun (1984) won the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Prize in naval history.

Clark C. Spence is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois. He published thirteen books, mostly on Western history, over a career spanning six decades. Known as the dean of mining historians, he was the first president of the Mining History Association and the eighth president of the Western History Association. In 2001 the Mining History Association established the Clark Spence Award, presented to books in mining history that best champion the research, interpretation, and writing skills practiced by Spence throughout his career.     

—Art Spiegelman is the author most recently of Open Me . . . I’m a Dog!

Roger Spiller’s essay on the World War II generation appeared in the December 1991 issue.

Roger J. Spiller retired as the George C. Marshall Distinguished Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is the first George C. Marshall Distinguished Professor of History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Spiller is a noted author and editor who recently wrote In the School of War, released in 2010. 

—Ellen Handler Spitz teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University and is the author of Inside Picture Books .

June Sprigg is curator of collections at Hancock Shaker Village, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Indispensable to her research on this article, Ms. Sprigg reports, was Mary Richmond’s excellent Shaker bibliography.

John Springer has written several books about the history of the movies. He is the president of his own public relations company in New York City.

John G. Sproat (1921-2008) taught at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he was chair of the history department from 1974 to 1983 and a senior fellow at the Institute for Southern Studies. Sproat also taught at Michigan State University, Williams College, and Lake Forest College. He was a three-time Fulbright professor, twice in Germany and once in Indonesia, a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge, a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and a lecturer in India and Pakistan. He was the author of The Best Men: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age and served as series editor of the Southern Classics series published by the University of South Carolina Press. 

Vernon C. Squires was thirty-five when he wrote these letters. He had a master of science degree from Cornell University in architectural engineering and was working as a senior research engineer at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio, when he retired in 1975. He died shortly before this issue went to press.

COPYRIGHT©1972 BY HARPER & ROW

Michelle Stacey is the author of The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery , about a woman who displayed mysterious symptoms after being thrown from a streetcar in 1865.

Walter Stahr is the author of Stanton: Lincoln’s War Secretary; Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man, a biography of one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century; and John Jay: Founding Father, a biography of America’s first Supreme Court Chief Justice. He lives in Newport Beach, California.

Margot Liberty has lived with the Northern Cheyennes and. spent a year as a historian, interpreter, and guide for the National Park Service at the Custer Battlefield Monument. She now teaches anthropology at the University of Minnesota. She and Mr. Stands in Timber have worked together on a history of the Northern Cheyennes soon to be published by the Yale University Press.

Eric Stange is the founder and executive producer of Spy Pond Productions, which specializes in producing documentaries on historical and scientific topics. In addition, Strange is an award-winning director and writer whose work can be seen on PBS, The Discovery Channel, and the BBC. He has been awarded the Harvard University Charles Warren Fellowship in American History for his achievements, and writes a column on media and history for American Heritage.

An associate professor of history and American studies at Yale, David E. Stannard recently has published The Puritan Way of Death (Oxford University Press, 1977).