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Godfrey Rathbone Benson, the first Baron Charnwood (1864–1945), was born in Arlesford, Hampshire, England, and educated at Oxford. As a member of the Liberal party he served three years in the House of Commons and later, after his elevation to the peerage in 1911, in the House of Lords. We do not know exactly why, but he soon began work on a life of Abraham Lincoln, which was published in England in 1916. Unlike many other biographies of Lincoln, Charnwood’s ...

Christopher Clark is professor of modern European history and a fellow of St. Catharine’s College at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He has also written Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947, among other books.

R. Bruce Craig is a historian of espionage whose work on the life of Alger Hiss has consumed his attention for more than two decades. He has previously written Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case, praised by reviewers as "a work of prodigious and meticulous scholarship" that ranks him “among the finest historians of the domestic Cold War.” Craig now teaches American history at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada, and is a fellow with the ...

Elizabeth Custer (1842–1933) was born in Monroe, Michigan, the daughter of a wealthy and influential judge. Beautiful and intelligent, she led her class at a girls’ seminary. She met her flamboyant future husband in 1862 in the midst of the Civil War. They had a loving but tumultuous relationship, and despite hardships were utterly devoted to each other. Libbie was one of the only wives to follow their husbands wherever the army took them. She refused to be left behind, ...

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and taught for a number of years before leaving academic life to write. She became a leading French public intellectual, political activist, feminist theorist, and social theorist, her most influential book being The Second Sex, a classic study of what it means to be a woman. Beauvoir did not consider herself a philosopher, but her significant contributions to existentialism have solidified her legacy in that field. She also wrote novels, essays, ...