Authors

Bill White is currently chairman of Houston Banking and senior advisor for Lazard, a firm advising corporate executives, boards, and governments throughout the world. Mr. White served as mayor of Houston from 2003 to 2009 and deputy secretary of energy during the Clinton administration. As mayor of Houston, White received the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award for his leadership of relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina and Governing magazine's Governing Official of the Year award in 2007. He has been a successful CEO, has served on the boards of numerous corporations, and has practiced and taught law. White ran for governor in 2010 against Rick Perry, receiving more votes than any Democratic candidate in the history of Texas.

After the Civil War broke out in 1861, Edward White enlisted in the Confederate army. Little is known of his activities other than that he served as a captain on the staff of Brigadier General Thomas L. Clingman, a participant in, among others, the Wilderness campaign. After the war White studied law in Winchester, Virginia, and was admitted to the bar in 1866. At about the same time he married Gertrude Douglas of Charles Town, West Virginia; the couple had six children. In i8jo White was appointed a judge in Clarke County, Virginia; but two years later he moved to St. Louis, where he resumed his law practice. He was a police-court justice there from 1885 to 1888. On March 31, 1888, he died of tuberculosis.

John I. White (1902-1992) was a writer, singer of cowboy songs, radio personality, and map draftsman. His singing career culminated when he played his guitar and sang as "The Lonesome Cowboy" on the NBC radio drama "Death Valley Days" sponsored by Twenty-Mule-Team Borax from 1929-1936. He maintained a lifelong interest in cowboy songs and the American West, researching and writing articles and two books on this and other topics.

—John H. White, Jr., is a professor of history at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, and is former curator of transportation at the National Museum of American History.

Ronald C. White, Jr., is the author of The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words and Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural .

Mr. Whitehill is the director and librarian of the noted Boston Athenaeum. This article originally appeared in The Times Literary Supplement of London.

Flint Whitlock is a military historian and the Editor of WWII Quarterly magazine. After 30 years in the advertising world, Flint Whitlock decided to switch careers and follow his passion: history, particularly military history. A graduate of the University of Illinois and a former U.S. Army officer (1965-70) with tours in West Germany and Vietnam, he has authored or co-authored 13 books and dozens of magazine articles since 1992, and has won numerous awards. He has led D-Day battlefield tours to England and France for National Geographic and the Smithsonian, appeared in several documentaries on The History Channel, Fox News, and "War Stories with Oliver North," and has been the editor of WWII Quarterly magazine (Sovereign Media) since 2010.

Ralph Whitney, ex-naval officer, former magazine art editor, and steady contributor to ship periodicals, is now at work on a biography of E. K. Collins, to be published this fall.

Arnold Whitridge was master of Calhoun College and professor of history at Yale until 1942. His latest book, Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator , appeared last year.

Richard Whittle is the author of Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution and of The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey. A former Global Fellow in International Security Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and Verville Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Whittle has written for Air & Space Smithsonian, the U.S. Naval Institute journal Proceedings, the web site BreakingDefense.com, the Vertical Flight Society journal Vertiflite, and numerous other publications.

—Tom Wicker is the author most recently of Easter Lilly: A Novel of the South Today .

Steve Wiegand is an award-winning journalist and history writer. His 35-year journalism career was spent at the San Diego Evening Tribune, where he was chief political writer; San Francisco Chronicle, where he was state capitol bureau chief, and Sacramento Bee, where he was a special projects writer and politics columnist. Wiegand is the author or co-author of 10 books, including The Dancer, the Dreamers and the Queen of Romania; U.S. History for Dummies, which is currently in its fourth edition and has been published in both Chinese and German; The Mental Floss History of the World; Papers of Permanence; Lessons from the Great Depression for Dummies, and The American Revolution for Dummies.

Henry Wiencek is writing a book about the legacy of slavery.

Frederick Bernays Wiener was the author of “Our Fumbling Foes of ’76” in the April issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE this year. A lawyer for over forty years and a retired colonel, he was recently awarded the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Medal in recognition of “a lifetime of outstanding public service to the United States Army and the legal profession.”

Alan Wiener, an attorney who has been studying the DD Tanks for more than ten years, recently completed a book-length manuscript on the subject.

New York 4th March 1865 [Signed] STILLMAN K. WIGHTMAN

—Max WiIk wrote for the screen and television in its golden age and is the author of many books, most recently a history of Hollywood writers, Schmucks With Underwoods .

Curtis Wilkie is a journalist, college professor and historian of the American South. He was the longtime Southern bureau chief for the Boston Globe, and was the first Senior Fellow of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics at the University of Mississippi. Historian Douglas Brinkley has written that, “Over the past four decades no reporter has critiqued the American South with such evocative sensitivity and bedrock honesty as Curtis Wilkie.” Wilkie is the author of Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South, Assassins, Eccentrics, Politicians, and Other Persons of Interest: Fifty Pieces from the Road, and The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America's Most Powerful Trial Lawyer.

Considered one of the most influential journalists since World War II, George F. Will is a syndicated columnist, a television news analyst, and the author of several books, most recently One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation (2008). Aside from his writings on politics and public policy, Will has also published several books on baseball. This essay has been adapted from the foreword to Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy, a collection of essays to be published by W. W. Norton & Company.

Frank J. Williams Chief Justice Supreme Court of Rhode Island

An authority on the Civil War, T. Harry Williams is professor of history at Louisiana State University. His most recent book was the best-selling Lincoln and His Generals .

The author of several books and many articles, Mr. Williams is currently writing a book on Golden Gate Bridge suicides.

Juan Williams is political analyst for Fox News Channel and the author of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (1987), a companion to the documentary series of the same name about the Civil Rights Movement; Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (2000), a biography of Thurgood Marshall, the first black American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States; and

R. Hal Williams (1941-2016) earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Princeton University Phi Beta Kappa in 1963 and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University in 1964 and 1968, respectively.  He was named one of Yale’s 10 Best Teachers in 1973 and 1974 before assuming a position at Southern Methodist university in 1975.  There, he was professor of history, chaired the history department, and served as dean of Dedman College before becoming dean of research and graduate studies. A recipient of many awards from SMU, including the "M" Award, the university's highest honor for service to the university, he retired in 2011.

Garry Wills has authored many books that study George Washington, Richard Nixon, the Kennedy family, Ronald Reagan, and religion in America. He has won many literary awards including, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction for his book Lincoln at Gettysburg He currently serves as Professor Emeritus of History at Northwestern University.

Robert Wilson has been an award-winning editor at Preservation, Civilization, and The American Scholar, which he has edited since 2004. He writes often for magazines and newspapers and was on staff at USA Today and The Washington Post. Wilson is the author of biographies of Mathew Brady, Clarence King, and P.T. Barnum. He lives in Manassas, Virginia.

Arkansas-born but for many years a resident of Vermont, Charles Morrow Wilson has written articles for the Reader’s Digest and other magazines. Among his books are The Bodacious Ozarks and News Is Country Grown .

Ellen Wilson teaches a course in children’s literature at Indiana University. She is the author of several books for children, the two most recent being Ernie Pyle: Boy From Back Home and, in collaboration with Nan AgIe, Three Boys and a Train .

Douglas L. Wilson is George A. Lawrence Professor of English at Knox College and is co-editor, with Rodney O. D’avis, of a forthcoming edition of W. H. Herndon’s letters and interviews about Lincoln to be published by the University of Illinois Press.

Mr. Wilson, a frequent contributor to AMERICAN HERITAGE , is the author of Indiana: A History , published last year. For further reading: The Lords Baltimore and the Maryland Palatinate , by C. C. Hall (J. Murphy, 1902); Maryland; The History of a Palatinate , by W. H. Brown (Houghton Mifflin, 1912).

William Wilson, a retired Green Beret colonel, is a veteran of the parachute invasions of France and Holland in World War II and took part in the defense of Bastogne with the 101st Airborne Division. Wilson served as an intelligence officer on the Joint Staff in Vietnam and, after retiring from the Army, helped build “Camp David Accord” air bases in the Negev Desert. Fredric Paul Smoler, who teaches history and political theory at Sarah Lawrence College, helped in the preparation of this article.

Mr. Wingrove is a recently retired communications manager for the Michigan State Police, and former Director of Communications for the Michigan House of Representatives. Mr. Wingrove received a Master's degree in Journalism from Michigan State University.

DOUGLAS L. WINIARSKI is a professor of Religious Studies and American Studies at the University of Richmond, where he teaches a wide range of courses on the history of religion in early America. More information about his scholarship can be found at www.DouglasWiniarski.com.

Jay Winik, one of the nation's leading historians, is the author of The New York Times bestseller April 1865, and 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History. In April 2003, "April 1865" premiered as a critically acclaimed and Emmy award-nominated two hour feature documentary special on the History Channel, with a special preview at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Profiled on the cover of Washington Post TV Guide, the award winning special has been watched by some 50 million people.  Winik is also a regular contributor for history to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Allan Winkler is a professor emeritus of history at Miami University in Ohio. He is the author of The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945(1978); Home Front, U.S.A.: America During World War II (1986); Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (1993); and Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Making of Modern America (2006). His most recent book is "To Everything There Is a Season": Pete Seeger and the Power of Song (2009).

Adam Winkler is a professor at the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America and We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

William W. W inn is the former managing editor of Atlanta magazine. He is currently a freelance writer specializing in articles on the South, and regularly writes a column for South Today , a publication of the Southern Regional Council.

Viola Hopkins Winner is completing a new study of Henry Adams entitled The Social Education of Henry Adams . She is also one of the editors of the six-volume Letters of Henry Adams (Harvard University Press).

Alexander Winston is the author who writes on the history of privateers and pirates, including his noted works No Man Knows My Grave (Houghton Mifflin, 1969) and Privateers and Pirates, 1665-1715.

Richard Winston was a historian, National Book Award Winner, and translator of German works into English.

Carter Wiseman is a journalist and instructor at the Yale School of Architecture. He was architectural critic for New York magazine from 1980 to 1996 and recently retired as President of the McDowell Colony. Wiseman is the author of Twentieth-Century American Architecture and Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style: A Life in Architecture. He lives in Weston, Connecticut. Photo courtesy of the Yale Alumni Magazine.

Mr. Wittenberg, a former newspaperman who now runs a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., contributed “Echec!” (about a nineteenth-century chess hoax) to the February, 1960, AMERICAN HERITAGE . For further reading: Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality , by Arthur S. Link (Princeton University, 1960); The Enemy Within , by Henry Landau (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1937).

—Pat Willard is the author of Pie Every Day: Recipes and Slices of Life . Her latest book is A Soothing Broth .

Tom Wolfe’s most recent book is From Bauhaus to Our House , a controversial survey of modern architecture.

Bertram D. Wolfe is the author of Six Keys to the Soviet System; Khrushchev and Stalin’s Ghost; and Three Who Made a Revolution, the first volume of a history of the Russian Revolution. He is now at work on the second volume, The Conquest of Power. Nine years younger than John Reed, Mr. Wolfe knew him personally, as he did many of the other persons and movements that figure in his picture of the world of John Reed.