Michael Beschloss is a historian and the New York Times-bestselling author of nine books, including Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance (1980); Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair (1986); The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963 (1991); The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany (2002); and Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 (2007). Born in Chicago and educated at Williams College and Harvard University, Beschloss is a contributor to NBC News, PBS NewsHour, and the New York Times, and has been called "the nation's leading presidential historian" by Newsweek. He lives with his wife in Washington, DC.

Strobe Talbott is the president of the Brookings Institution and the author of twelve books, including Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control (1984); At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (1993), written with Michael Beschloss; The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (2002); and The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation (2008). A former Time columnist and Washington bureau chief, Talbott served as deputy secretary of state for seven years and was the architect of the Clinton administration's policy toward Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union. He translated and edited two volumes of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs in the early 1970s and founded the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization in 2001. Talbott currently lives in Washington, DC.