Authors

“Charles B. Strozier is a professor of history at Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois. This article has been excerpted from his forthcoming book, Lincoln’s Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings , which will be published soon by Basic Books.

Al J. Stump lives in California, where it all happened. He has written five books on sports in America.

Mr. Sturgis is a free-lance writer and railroad buff who lives in New York City. Among his sources for this article were The First Transcontinental Railroad , by John D. Galloway (Simmons-Boardman, 1950); The Big Four , by Oscar Lewis (Knopf, 1938); The Story of American Railroads , by Stewart H. Holbrook (Crown, 1947); and The Great Iron Trail , by Robert W. Howard (Putnam, 1962).

Boyd B. Stutler is a newspaperman who for 18 years was managing editor of the American Legion Magazine . He has followed the John Brown theme for 40 years and is now working on a biography. He lives in Charleston, W. Va.

William Clark Styron, Jr. (1925 – 2006) was an American novelist and essayist best known for his novels, including: Lie Down in Darkness (1951), The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)and Sophie's Choice (1979); which inspired the Academy award-winning film starring Meryl Streep.

Until her death in 1960, Ruth Suckow was a distinguished regional writer, and many of her plots and characters have their roots in her native Iowa. Her first novel was Country People, published in 1924, and over the next thirty-five years there followed The Odyssey of a Nice Girl, The Bonney Family, The Folks, and several collections of short stories. This article was recently discovered among her papers by her husband, Ferner Nuhn, and is published here for the first lime.

Richard M. Sudhalter is jazz critic for the New York Post , author of Bix: Man and Legend , and a respected cornetist.

Mark Sufrin is a freelance writer who was a producer and writer of the Academy Award nominated “On the Bowery.” He has also directed film documentaries and been a motion-picture critic and lecture. 

Mr. Sugg, who is a leading authority on the works of John Faulkner, lives in Memphis, Tennessee, the metropolis nearest to Faulkner’s Mississippi hill country. It was with his cooperation, and with the kind permission of Mrs. John Faulkner, that the selection from Faulkner’s paintings on this and the following pages was made. With the exception of those for The Bear (opposite) and The House of Doom (pages 74–75), the captions were written by John Faulkner himself.

Mr. Sullivan, the distinguished science editor of the New York Times , has won many awards for his own writing on science.

Langdon Sully is the grandson of Alfred Sully. The letters and paintings included here belong to him and his brothers, Thomas, Robert, and Lealie

Col. Harry G. Summers, Jr. was the author of numerous books on military strategy and history including On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (1982). He was also an instructor and Distinguished Fellow at the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  Summers served as a squad leader in the Korean War and battalion and corps operations officer in the Vietnam War. He also served on the negotiation team for the United States at the end of the Vietnam War.

Darlene Superville is a veteran White House reporter for The Associated Press (AP), covering the presidency since Barack Obama's administration and becoming known for her in-depth coverage of first ladies and social aspects of the White House, including co-authoring the biography Jill: A Biography of the First Lady.  Superville began her AP career in New Jersey before moving to Washington, D.C., and has also managed the AP's national political desk. She is a graduate of New York University (NYU).

Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and holds a professorship in the university's history department and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. A 1994 graduate of Stanford with an M. A. in history from Ohio University, he received his PhD in history from Yale in 1994.  Among his many books are Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (2003), Henry Kissinger and the American Century (2007), and, most recently,  The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office (2017).

Rachel Swaby is freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. Her first book, Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science—And the World, appeared in 2015. Ms. Swaby's writing has appeared in Runner's World, Wired, The New Yorker, Afar Magazine, Tested.com, O, The Oprah Magazine, Outside, and others. She is also a Senior Editor at Longshot Magazine, former presenter at Pop-Up Magazine, and was the editor in chief of The Connective, issue 1.

After a career in radio and television and as a professor of broadcasting, Tom Swafford is now retired and lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

A native of Illinois, Martha Swain has been a free lance writer in New York for several years and is now on the staff of the Office of Information Services at New York University

Jon Swan is an American poet, playwright, librettist, journalist, and editor. He studied at Oberlin College, from which he graduated with a degree in English in 1950. In the 1950s, he taught at the Ecole d'Humanite in Switzerland, worked for the American Friends Service Committee, and received a Master's Degree in English from Boston University. During the 1970s, he worked as a translator, from Dutch and German, and was senior editor at Saturday Review and, later, senior editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.After retiring in 1994, he worked as an editor in Beijing and Kathmandu. As a free-lance journalist, he has written about environmental issues in the U.S. and Iceland. He was awarded a Rockefeller Grant for play-writing in 1968 and a Guggenheim Fellowship for film-writing in 1981.

W. A. Swanberg has written highly acclaimed biographies of two American journalists, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, and is now at work on a third, on the late Henry Luce of Time, Inc.

James Swanson is a senior legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation and Edgar Award-winning author of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (William Morrow 2006). Prior to working at the Heritage Foundation, Swanson served as a senior fellow in constitutional studies and former editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He also worked for the U.S. International Trade Commission, clerked for Douglas H. Ginsburg, chief justice of the District of Columbia circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, and worked in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. Swanson studied history as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago before graduating from the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law.

Ryan Swanson is a writer, historian, teacher, and public speaker whose research focuses primarily on sports in America. His newest book, The Strenuous Life: Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of the American Athlete, was published with Diversion Books in August 2019. Swanson is an Associate Professor in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico and the Director of the Lobo Scholars Program — an innovative initiative that serves NCAA Division I Student Athletes.   

Will D. Swearingen is studying for his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin.

Patrick Sweeney is a leading gunsmith and the author of many books on guns and gunsmithing.

Kevin Sweeney is a Professor of American Studies and History at Amherst College. In 2003, Sweeney co-wrote Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield with Evan Haefeli. He specializes in colonial North American History, the American Revolution, and Native American history.

Dr. Sweet was a retired dentist who lived in Fairport, New York, where he wrote free-lance articles and listened to tram whistles whenever possible.

Julia Sweig is the author of the highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight, longlisted for the 2022 PEN America Literary Award in biography. Sweig is the creator, host, and executive producer of the podcast In Plain Sight, a co-production of Best Case Studios and ABC News Studios. She also is the executive producer of The Lady Bird Diaries, a feature-length documentary film directed by award-winning filmmaker Dawn Porter, which is based on her book and podcast. 

Joel L. Swerdlow is an author, editor, journalist, researcher, and educator who has written eight books, among them Code Z, Media Technology and the Vote: A Source Book, and To Heal a Nation: The Story of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which he co-authored with Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs and which became a 1988 NBC movie. His most recent work is Nature's Medicine: Plants That Heal: A chronicle of mankind's search for healing plants through the ages (National Geographic Books, 2000).

Claire Sanders Swift is an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist and national media consultant. Her career began in Washington, DC with Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Bureau Chief, Hedrick Smith. She then honed her media acumen producing for ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC, Harpo/Paramount Pictures in New York and Los Angeles eventually returning to Washington DC. Swift also has a National Headliner Award, and a Distinguished Alumnae Award from her Alma Mater, Hollins University. She is past president and executive strategist of the American News Women’s Club.

A. Hughlett Mason—no kin of Charles—has recently retired as senior physicist for the Army Chief of Staff. William F. Swindler, professor of legal history at the College of William and Mary, is a specialist in constitutional law and American political history.

Ron Switzer worked at the National Park Service for 44 years, starting as director of the artifact lab preserving the cargo of the Steamboat Bertand. He later served as Superintendent of several National Parks including Mesa Verde, Jean LaFitte (New Orleans), Big Thicket National Preserve, Mammoth Cave, and Buffalo National River.  Mr. Switzer is the author of numerous journal articles and several books including The Steamboat Bertrand and Missouri River Commerce (University of Oklahoma Press, 2013) and When Justice Came to the Plains - Judge William Gaslin Jr. and Frontrier Law in Nebraska 1876-1889 (2014).

Craig L. Symonds is a noted author, historian, speaker, and a professor emeritus at the United States Naval Academy, where he formally chaired the History Department. A former Naval officer himself, Symonds has written over a dozen books on American Naval history, President Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War. For his most recent work, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War, Symonds was awarded both the Benjamin Barondess Award of the Civil War Roundtable and the Lincoln Prize in 2009. 

Gay Talese is a writer and pioneer of "New Journalism," a movement in literary nonfiction that also included figures like Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion. Throughout the 60s, Talese reported for publications like the New York Times and Esquire magazine, where his groundbreaking profile "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" won him critical acclaim. He is the author of 14 books, including The Voyeur's Motel, Thy Neighbor's Wife, and most recently Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener.

Bernard Taper is a staff writer for The New Yorker . He is the editor of a volume of Mark Twain’s early journalism, Mark Twain’s San Francisco, the preface of which appeared in AMERICAN HERITAGE .

Professor Joel Tarr, of Carnegie-Mellon University, is an expert on the problems of America’s emerging urban centers in the early 1900’s.

Jerome Tarshis is a free-lance writer living in San Francisco.

Jeffrey Tayler is a U.S.-born author and journalist who has lived in Russia since 1993. He is the Russia correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and a contributor to several other magazines as well as to NPR's All Things Considered. He has written several books documenting various regions of the world, including Facing the Congo, Siberian Dawn, Glory in a Camel's Eye, Angry Wind, and River of No Reprieve, about a challenging raft trip down Russia's Lena River. Tayler is also fluent in several languages, including Russian, Arabic, French, modern Greek, and his native English.

Candacy A. Taylor is an award-winning author, photographer, and cultural documentarian working on a multidisciplinary project based on the Green Book. She is the author of Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America (Abrams Books), as well as the curator and content specialist for an exhibition that will be toured by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) starting in June 2020. The exhibition will travel throughout the United States for three years.

ALAN TAYLOR is an American historian specializing in early United States history. He is the author of several books about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution, and the early American Republic. Since 1995, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award for non-fiction for his work. He is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He taught previously at the University of California, Davis, and Boston University.

John M. Taylor is the author of the 1970 biography Garfield of Ohio: The Available Man .

A lifelong editor and publisher, Coley Taylor is now retired and living in Mexico.

—Teller is the smaller, quieter half of Penn & Teller.

A writer on architecture, Allan Temko has been teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. He is presently at work on a history of San Francisco Bay and its culture.

—Edward Tenner is the author of Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences .

AMERICAN HERITAGE BOOK SELECTION COPYRIGHT © 1970 BY STUDS TERKEL

Louise Hall Tharp’s most recent book is Adventurous Alliance , a biography of Louis and Elizabeth Agassiz. She has also written biographies of Julia Ward Howe and Horace Mann. For further reading: Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence , edited by Elizabeth Cary Agassiz (Houghton Mifflin, 1885); Life, Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz , by Jules Marcou (Macmillan, 1896); Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science , by Edward Lurie (University of Chicago Press, 1960.

John Demos is a professor of history at Yale University and the author most recently of The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story From Early America . Robert Thayer owns an antiques business in Sheffield, Massachusetts, specializing in the art and artifacts of the early Republic.