Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. His best-known works include his tetralogy about what he called the "long 19th centur…
Daron Acemoglu is the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2005 he won the prestigious John Bates Clark medal, awarded to the best econom…
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius (ca. 69/75 - after 130), was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era. His most important surviving work i…
Born in 1948, Tony Judt was raised in the East End of London by a mother whose parents had immigrated from Russia and a Belgian father who descended from a line of Lithuanian rabbis. Judt was educated…
Stefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Am…
Henry Alfred Kissinger (born Heinz Alfred Kissinger) was a German-born American bureaucrat, diplomat, and 1973 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently…
Bryan Burrough joined Vanity Fair in August 1992 and has been a special correspondent for the magazine since January 1995. He has reported on a wide range of topics, including the events that led to t…
Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 an…
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an American political scientist who gained prominence through his "Clash of Civilizations"(1993, 1996) thesis of a new post-Cold War world order. Previously, his academi…
Robert Aldrich is an Australian historian and writer. Aldrich is a Professor of European History, he teaches and researches modern European and colonial history, including the history of France since …
Andrew Feinstein was elected an ANC member of parliament in South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. He resigned in 2001 in protest at the ANC government’s refusal to allow an unfettered inv…
Frans G. Bengtsson (1894–1954) was born and raised in the southern Swedish province of Skåne, the son of an estate manager. His early writings, including a doctoral thesis on Geoffrey Chaucer and two …
Peter Hopkirk was born in Nottingham, the son of Frank Stewart Hopkirk, a prison chaplain, and Mary Perkins. He grew up at Danbury, Essex, notable for the historic palace of the Bishop of Rochester. H…
Oswald Spengler was born in 1880 in Blankenburg (then in the Duchy of Brunswick, German Empire) at the foot of the Harz mountains, the eldest of four children, and the only boy. His family was conserv…
Roger Crowley was born in 1951 and spent part of his childhood in Malta. He read English at Cambridge University and taught English in Istanbul, where he developed a strong interest in the history of …
French writer Honoré de Balzac (born Honoré Balzac), a founder of the realist school of fiction, portrayed the panorama of society in a body of works, known collectively as La comédie humaine.
Dr. AMANDA H. PODANY is a historian and author specializing in the study of the ancient Near East, and a professor emeritus of history at Cal Poly Pomona. She has written several books on ancient Near…
Ernst Jünger was a decorated German soldier and author who became famous for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel. The son of a successful businessman and chemist, Jünger rebelled against an affluent…
Muriel Barbery is a French novelist and professor of philosophy. Barbery entered the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud in 1990 and obtained her agrégation in philosophy in 1993. She the…
From the death of Augustus in 14 Histories and Annals, greatest works of Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Roman public official, concern the period to Domitian in 96. …
Baber, also Babar, or Babur, originally Zahir ud-Din Mohammed, a Mongol, conquered India, made periodic raids from 1519-1524, captured Delhi and Agra in 1526, and founded the dynasty of Mughal.
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is an Indian economist. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Banerjee is a co-founder of the …
David McCullough was a Yale-educated, two-time recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize (Truman; John Adams) and the National Book Award (The Path Between the Seas; Mornings on Horseback). His many other …
"Dipo Faloyin is a Senior Editor at VICE, where he focuses on race, culture, and identity around the world. His writing has also appeared in Dazed, Prospect, Huffington Post, and Refinery 29 among oth…