Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, both at the University of Virginia. His books and essays focus on critical episodes in American and world history. A former civil rights attorney and career diplomat, he has also served at all levels of American government. He was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and, before that, directed the Carter-Ford commission on federal election reform. He has worked on international policy in each of the five administrations from Reagan through Obama.

Condoleezza Rice was the sixty-sixth US secretary of state and the first black woman to hold that office. Prior to that, she was the first woman to serve as national security adviser. She is a professor at Stanford University and cofounder of RiceHadleyGates LLC. Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011), Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010), Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom (2017), and Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity (2018).