Kai Bird's most recent book, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, is a meld of personal memoir and history, fusing his early life in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt with an account of the American experience in the Middle East and intimate insights into the Arab-Israeli tragedy. He is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Duff Cooper Prize for History in London. He wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms. He is also co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. He is the recipient of many awards, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a contributing editor of The Nation.

Nicholas Goldberg is editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages. In the past, he has served as deputy editor of the editorial pages, edited the paper's Sunday Opinion section, and served as Op-Ed page editor. He is a former Middle East bureau chief for Newsday. In that position, he covered many major stories including the peace process in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza; presidential elections inIran; arms monitoring in Iraq; famine in Sudan; and civil war in Algeria. From 1992 to 1995, he was the paper's statehouse bureau chief, covering the administrations of Governors Mario Cuomo and George Pataki. He also covered Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign.