Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-born U.S. experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist, and popular science author. He is a Harvard College Professor and the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Pinker is the author of several non-fiction bestsellers including: The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), Words and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), and The Stuff of Thought (2007). and The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Pinker was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and one of Prospect and Foreign Policy's… 100 top public intellectuals in both years the poll was carried out, 2005 and 2008; in 2010 and 2011 he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers. His research in cognitive psychology has won the Early Career Award (1984) and Boyd McCandless Award (1986) from the American Psychological Association, the Troland Research Award (1993) from the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Dale Prize (2004) from the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the George Miller Prize (2010) from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. He has also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Newcastle, Surrey, Tel Aviv, McGill, and the University of Troms�, Norway. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, in 1998 and in 2003. On May 13, 2006, he received the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution.
Born in Zurich, Switzerland on December 20, 1969, Alain de Botton was educated at Cambridge University, England, and now divides his time between London and Washington, D.C. With the publication of his first novel, Essays in Love, de Botton quickly became one of the most talked about British novelists of the 1990s. Although the basic plot of Essays in Love (published in the U.S. as On Love) is a rather typical love story, de Botton presents it in a unique and humorous way. De Botton's other novels include The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping and the Novel, which is written in a similar style to Essays on Love, and Kiss and Tell, which follows a would-be biographer as he attempts to write… the life story of the first person he encounters. Alain de Botton is also the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel.
Malcolm Gladwell, non-fiction writer and journalist, was born in England on Sept 3, 1963. He was raised in rural Ontario and graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in History. Gladwell was previously a business and science reporter for the Washington Post and is currently a staff writer with the New Yorker magazine. He is well-known for his many New York Times bestselling books: Blink, The Tipping Point, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. His writing is often a product of sociology and psychology with implications for the social sciences and business. Gladwell became a successful public speaker after writing his bestselling books. In 2005,… Time Magazine named Gladwell one of its 100 most influential people. Gladwell's most famous quote comes from his book, Outliers; he states that "It takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert..." at any competition or task. Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada on June 30, 2011. Gladwell describes himself as a Christian. He was raised in the Mennonite tradition, and wandered away from his Christian roots when he moved to New York, only to rediscover his faith during the writing of David and Goliath and through his encounter with Wilma Derksen. In 2005, Gladwell commanded approximately $45,000 for his speaking fee. His books include: Outliers, Blink, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath.