Joyce Appleby, professor emerita at University of California, Los Angeles, has long taken an interest in bringing history to a larger public. Past president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society for the History of the Early Republic, she has thought deeply about the complex relationship of the American public with the country's professional historians. As co-director of the History News Service, she now facilitates historians' writing op-ed essays for newspapers which embed contemporary issues in their relevant histories. Before becoming a professional historian, she worked on Mademoiselle magazine and the Pasadena Star-News.

Peter Barnes, entrepreneur and writer, is currently a senior fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute in Point Reyes Station, California. In 1976 he co-founded a worker-owned solar energy company in San Francisco, and in 1983 he co- founded Working Assets Money Fund. He subsequently served as president of Working Assets Long Distance. In 1995 he was named Socially Responsible Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California. Barnes' previous books include Pawns: The Plight of the Citizen-Soldier, The People's Land and Who Owns the Sky? Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism. He is also the founder of the Mesa Refuge, a writers' retreat in northern California.