Wilson Smith is professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Davis. Thomas Bender is University Professor of the Humanities and a professor of history at New York University. He is the author of Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century America, winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize of the Organization of American Historians; New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City from 1750 To The Beginnings of Our Own Time; Intellect and Public Life: Essays on the Social History of Academic Intellectuals in the United States; and Community and Social Change in America; all published by Johns Hopkins.Philip P. Boucher is… Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and author of Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs, 1492ndash;1763, also published by Johns Hopkins.George Thomas is an assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. He previously taught at Williams College.
James Patterson was born in Newburgh, New York, on March 22, 1947. He graduated from Manhattan College in 1969 and received a M. A. from Vanderbilt University in 1970. His first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, was written while he was working in a mental institution and was rejected by 26 publishers before being published and winning the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery. He is best known as the creator of Alex Cross, the police psychologist hero of such novels as Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls. Cross has been portrayed on the silver screen by Morgan Freeman. He also writes the Women's Murder Club series, as well as the Maximum Ride series, Daniel X series, the Witch and Wizard… series, and the Middle School series for children. He has won numerous awards including the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Reader's Digest Reader's Choice Award. He also made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012 with his title I Funny: A Middle School Story and again in 2013 with his title Middle School: Get Me Out of Here!, 12th of Never, Alex Cross, Run, Confessions: The Private School Murders, Cross My Heart and The Christmas Wedding. Patterson is the co-author of Guilty Wives (2012) and Mistress (2013) with David Ellis. First Love, co-authored with Emily Raymond, made the New York Times bestseller list in January, 2014. James Patterson co-authored Private L.A. with Mark Sullivan and it made The New York Times Best Seller List in March 2014. Patterson also made The New York Times Best Seller List with Unlucky 13, Invisible, Treasure Hunters: Danger Down the Nile, and children's title Ultimate Showdown, book 5 in the Middle Scholl Series, in 2014.