Biography: At the Gates of the 20th Century (2009): Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year. Jim Newton is the editor of the Los Angeles Times' editorial pages. He shared in the Pulitzer prizes awarded to the Los Angeles Times for coverage of the 1992 riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. He is the author of Justice for Earl Warren and the Nation He Made.Paul J. Giddings is a professor in Afro-American Studies at Smith College and the author of When and Where I Enter. Giddings' latest work, A Sword Among Lions, is a 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in Biography.Richard Reeves is the author of several best sellers, including President Nixon and President Kennedy. More recently, A Force of Nature, his biography of Ernest B. Rutherford, was published. Reeves is a syndicated columnist and winner of the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams Award.Robert Roper's biography on climber Willi Unsoeld, Fatal Mountaineer, won the 2002 Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain literature. His most recent book is Now the Drum of Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War.