British-born and educated historian John Plumb received his B.A. in 1933 from the University of London and his Ph.D. three years later from Cambridge University. After eight years as a research fellow at Cambridge, he became a member of the faculty and in 1966 professor of modern English history. During the same period and in the 1970s, he was a visiting professor in the United States at Columbia and at New York University. Plumb is the definitive authority on England's first prime minister, Robert Walpole, about whom he wrote a two-volume biography. Plumb presents a balanced study of the era of Whig supremacy and the earlier Hanoverian period, 1714--60. In addition to authoring books,… Plumb has edited a number of multivolume works and has published numerous articles and book reviews. Says Crane Brinton, "Plumb writes firmly and well in the British academic tradition of his master, G. M. Trevelyan" (N.Y. Herald Tribune).
Niall Ferguson was born April 18, 1964, in Glasgow. He is a Scottish historian. He specializes in financial and economic history as well as the history of empire. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His latest book is The Ascent of Money.
Simon Schama is the author of The Embarrassment of Riches, Citizens, Landscape and Memory, and most recently, Rembrandt's Eyes. He is currently Old Dominion Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. The second installment of his epic history of Britain is due to be published in April 2001.