Donald Kagan is Sterling Professor of History and Classics at Yale University, where he has taught since 1969. He received his A.B. degree in history from Brooklyn College, his M.A. in classics from Brown University, and his Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University. During 1958 to 1959 he studied at the American School of Classical Studies as a Fulbright Scholar. He has received three awards for undergraduate teaching at Cornell and Yale. He is the author of a history of Greek political thought, The Great Dialogue (1965); a four-volume history of the Peloponnesian war, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1969); The Archidamian War (1974); The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (1981); The Fall of the Athenian Empire (1987); a biography of Pericles, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (1991); On the Origins of War (1995); and The Peloponnesian War (2003). He is the coauthor, with Frederick W. Kagan, of While America Sleeps (2000). With Brian Tierney and L. Pearce Williams, he is the editor of Great Issues in Western Civilization , a collection of readings. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal for 2002 and was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the Jefferson Lecture in 2004.

Steven Ozment is McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University. He has taught Western Civilization at Yale, Stanford, and Harvard. He is the author of twelve books, including When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (1983). The Age of Reform, 1250-1550 (1980) won the Schaff Prize and was nominated for the 1981 National Book Award. Five of his books have been selections of the History Book Club: Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in Sixteenth Century Europe (1986), Three Behaim Boys: Growing Up in Early Modern Germany (1990), Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution (1992), The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth Century German Town (1996), and Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany (1999). His most recent publications are Ancestors: The Loving Family of Old Europe (2001), A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People (2004), "Why We Study Western Civ," The Public Interest , 158 (2005), and The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation (2011).

Frank M. Turner was John Hay Whitney Professor of History at Yale University and Director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, where he served as University Provost from 1988 to 1992. He received his B.A. degree from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. from Yale. He received the Yale College Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching. He directed a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute. His scholarly research received the support of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. He is the author of Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (1974); The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (1981), which received the British Council Prize of the Conference on British Studies and the Yale Press Governors Award; Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life (1993); and John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (2002). He also contributed numerous articles to journals and served on the editorial advisory boards of The Journal of Modern History , Isis , and Victorian Studies . He edited The Idea of a University , by John Henry Newman (1996), Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke (2003), and A pologia Pro Vita Sua and Six Sermons by John Henry Newman (2008). He served as a Trustee of Connecticut College from 1996-2006. In 2003, Professor Turner was appointed Director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Contributor Gregory F. Viggiano received his Ph.D. in classics from Yale University and is Associate Professor of History at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he teaches courses on ancient Greece and Rome and Western civilization. With Donald Kagan, he authored of Problems in the History of Ancient Greece (2009) and edited Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (2013), which has been translated into Spanish (2017). He has published chapters and articles on ancient Greek history and is currently editing A Cultural History of War in Antiquity . He joined the authorship team of The Western Heritage during preparation of the 12th Edition for publication.