James West Davidson received his Ph.D from Yale University. A historian who has pursued a full-time writing career, he is the author of numerous books, among them After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection (with Mark H. Lytle), The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth Century New England, and Great Heart: the History of a Labrador Adventure (with John Rugge). He is coeditor, with Michael Stoff, of the Oxford New Narratives in American History and is at work on a study of Ida B. Wells for the series.

William E. Gienapp has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at the University of Wyoming before moving to Harvard University, where he was Professor of History until his death in 2003. In 1988, he received the Avery O. Craven Award for his book The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856. He edited The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection and most recently published Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America and a companion volume, This Fiery Trial: the Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln.

Christine Leigh Heyrman is Professor of History at the University of Delaware. She received a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and is the author of Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690-1750. Her book Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt was awarded the Bancroft Prize in 1998.

Mark H. Lytle who received a Ph.D. from Yale University, is Professor of History and Environmental Studies and Chair of the History Program at Bard College. He was recently reappointed Mary Ball Washington Professor of History at University College, Dublin, in Ireland. His publications include The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941-1953, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection (with James West Davidson) and "An Environmental Approach to American Diplomatic History" in Diplomatic History. His most recent book, The Uncivil War: America in the Vietnam Era, will be published in 2005, and he is completing a biography of Rachel Carson.

Michael B. Stoff is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. The recipient of a Ph.D. from Yale University, he has received many teaching awards, most recently the Friars' Centennial Teaching Excellence Award. He is the author of Oil, War, and American Security: The Search for a National Policy on Foreign Oil, 1941-1947 and co-editor (with Jonathan Fanton and R. Hal Williams) of The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age. He is currently working on a brief narrative of the bombing of Nagasaki