Tom Shachtman has written twenty-five books, including the best-selling "The Gilded Leaf" (with Patrick Reynolds), as well as documentaries for all of the major television networks.<b>Elizabeth Dowling Taylor</b> received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Over a 22-year career in museum education and historical research, she was director of interpretation at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and director of education at James Madison’s Montpelier. Most recently a fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Taylor is now an independent scholar and lecturer. She is the author of <i>A Slave in the White House</i>. She lives in… Barboursville, Virginia.
Annette Gordon-Reed grew up in east Texas. She majored in History at Dartmouth College, graduating in 1981, and then attended Harvard Law School. Gordon-Reed worked as an associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel and was Counsel to the New York City Board of Corrections before becoming a professor of law at New York Law School in 1992. Gordon-Reed wrote the book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy after first becoming interested in the president as a child. She co-authored Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir and wrote Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History. Gordon-Reed is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Hemingses of Monticello.