Hendrik Willem van Loon received worldwide acclaim for the many books that he both wrote and illustrated. Among his most beloved are The Story of America, The Story of the Bible and The Life and Times of Rembrandt. European born and educated, van Loon was a professor at Antioch College and lectured at Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Munich. Robert Sullivan is the best-selling author of Rats and My American Revolution. John Merriman is the Charles Seymour Professor of History at Yale University. A specialist in nineteenth century French history, Merriman earned his Ph. D at the University of Michigan. He is the author of many books, including The Margins of City Life: Explorations on the French Urban Frontier, 1815–1851; Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century; The Agony of the Republic: The Repression of the Left in Revolutionary France, 1848–1851; and, most recently, The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village in Time (Norton, 2002). He regularly teaches the survey of modern European history at Yale.