American history

Surgeon and medical historian Ira Rutkow's new book is Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. Rutkow is also the author of Surgery: An Illustrated History, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Writer David Reynolds is the author of the new biography John Brown: Abolitionist: The Man who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. Reynold's book is considered to be a sympathetic look at the man who he says framed the issue of slavery in stark, uncompromising terms.

Edward Berkowitz is a professor of history and public administration and at George Washington University, where he also directs the Program in History and Public Policy. He is an expert on the history of Social Security.

Journalist Larry Tye examines the social history of the porter in Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. Tye says that the job was one of the best for African Americans at the time, and that it was a foothold in the American workplace. Tye reports for The Boston Globe.

Witte is Jonas Robitscher professor of law and ethics, and director of the law and religion program at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author of From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition.

The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet traces the relationships between Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleeza Rice. The group calls itself "The Vulcans." Some of its members have known each other 30 years. Mann is a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times.

He wrote the introduction and commentary for the new book The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of The Civil War by Writers and Reporters of The New York Times. McPherson is a professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of many books on the Civil War era including Battle Cry of Freedom.

As a child, she had a crush on the 19-year-old preacher in her church. He was known as M-L, but later he became Martin Luther King, Jr.

Clayborne Carson of the Founding Director of the King Papers Project, a long-term project to edit and publish the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

His new book is An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. It explores Washington's moral struggle with the issue of slavery. Wiencek won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography for his book The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White.