Professor Lichtman’s books include Prejudice and Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928; Your Family History; Ecological Inference; and The Keys to the White House. He was named the 1992-1993 Scholar-Teacher of the Year, the university’s highest faculty honor, and has provided commentary for all major U.S. broadcasting networks and cable companies, the Voice of America, and many foreign broadcast companies, including BBC and CBC. He worked with Dan Rather as a CBS consultant during the impeachment of President Clinton, served as the 2004 election-night analyst for BBC Worldwide, and is now political analyst for CNN Headline News. His more than 100 scholarly and popular articles have appeared in such journals and newspapers as the American Historical Review, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He is also a columnist for the Montgomery Gazette and has served as an expert witness in more than 70 voting rights and redistricting cases.

Prof. Munger received his Ph.D. in Economics at Washington University in St. Louis in 1984. Following his graduate training, he worked as a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission in the first Reagan Administration. His first teaching job was in the Economics Department at Dartmouth College, followed by appointments in the Political Science Department at the University of Texas (Austin, 1986-1990) and the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1990-7). At UNC, he served as Director of the Master of Public Administration Program, training city and county managers. He moved to Duke in 1997, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2000. He also became chair of the Political Science Department in 2000, and still serves in that post. Mike also has joint appointments in the Economics and Public Policy departments at Duke.

Prof. Munger's academic research has focused on Presidential - Congressional conflict, campaign finance, and regulation of markets. In addition to more than 80 articles and papers published in professional journals and edited volumes, Prof. Munger has coauthored or coedited (with Melvin Hinich) three books, Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice (University of Michigan Press, 1994), Analytical Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Empirical Studies in Comparative Politics (Kluwer Academic Press, 1998). His fourth and most recent book, Analyzing Policy: Choices, Conflicts, and Practices, was published in August 2000 by W.W. Norton. Current research interests include the evolution of the ideology of racism in the antebellum South, ballot access reform, and a study of how human subjects playing a computer simulation choose platforms in virtual "elections."

He blogs at Kids Prefer Cheese (link: http://mungowitzend.blogspot.com).

Ronald Kessler is the New York Times bestselling author of seventeen non-fiction books. Kessler began his career as a journalist in 1964 on the Worcester Telegram, followed by three years as an investigative reporter and editorial writer with the Boston Herald. In 1968, he joined the Wall Street Journal as a reporter in the New York bureau. He became an investigative reporter with the Washington Post in 1970 and continued as a staff writer until 1985.

Kessler's first book was THE LIFE INSURANCE GAME, an exposé of the life insurance industry published in 1985. His second book, THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi, is the inside story of the world"s preeminent arms dealer. Kessler’s next book, SPY vs. SPY: Stalking Soviet Spies in America, is the only book on the FBI’s secret counterintelligence program and contains the first interview with Karl Koecher, a Soviet bloc spy who became a mole in the CIA.

Kessler’s fourth book, MOSCOW STATION, is about the security breaches at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, the involvement of U.S. Marines, and the resulting investigations. Kessler’s THE SPY IN THE RUSSIAN CLUB: How Glenn Souther Stole America’s Nuclear War Plans and Escaped to Moscow is the bizarre tale of one of America’s most damaging spies who defected to the Soviet Union and committed suicide there.

Kessler’s sixth book, ESCAPE FROM THE CIA: How the CIA Won and Lost the Most Important KGB Spy Ever to Defect to the U.S., is about the defection and redefection of KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko from a restaurant in Washington’s Georgetown section. It contains the only interview with Yurchenko by a western journalist and portrays the CIA’s disastrous mishandling of the case. Kessler’s INSIDE THE CIA: Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Spy Agency depicts what the CIA really does and was the only book about the agency written with the CIA’s limited cooperation.

For Kessler’s eighth book, THE FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency, the FBI gave Kessler unprecedented access to the bureau. The book revealed for the first time the defection of Vasili Mitrokhin, whose notes from the KGB’s archives disclosed the existence over the years of hundreds of spies in the U.S. The book is the authoritative work on the modern FBI. Its findings led to the dismissal of William Sessions as FBI director over his abuses.

Having probed the CIA and FBI, Kessler was prepared to take on the modern White House. INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE: The Hidden Lives of the Modern Presidents and the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Institution depicts what the presidents and first families are really like and how the White House really operates, as seen by the Secret Service, Air Force One stewards, and White House aides and residence staff who know the true story.

Kessler’s tenth book, THE SINS OF THE FATHER: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, is the first major biography of Joe Kennedy in more than thirty years. Based in part on the only interview ever given by the surgeon who performed the lobotomy on her, the book reveals that for political reasons, Joe Kennedy covered up the fact that his daughter Rosemary was mentally ill rather than retarded, as the family has long claimed. The book documents payoffs Kennedy made to win the presidency for Jack. And it reveals an affair with his Hyannis Port secretary that lasted nine years—three times longer than his affair with movie star Gloria Swanson.

Kessler’s latest book, THE TERRORIST WATCH: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack, presents the chilling story of terrorists’ relentless efforts to mount another devastating attack on the United States and of the heroic efforts being made to stop those plots. Drawing on unprecedented access, the book takes readers inside the war rooms of this battle for our survival—from the newly created National Counterterrorism Center to FBI headquarters, from the CIA to the National Security Agency, from the Pentagon to the Oval Office—to explain why we have gone so long since 9/11 without a successful attack and to reveal the many close calls we never hear about.

Kessler and the book were featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com, a web site with an average of 4.1 million unique visitors a month, and of Newsmax magazine, which has a readership of 600,000. His stories for Newsmax have included interviews with President Bush, Donald Trump, Andy Card, Gen. Michael Hayden, Mitt Romney, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Lynne Cheney, Dana Perino, Jim Cramer, Deborah Norville, Robert S. Mueller III, Margaret Spellings, Brian Lamb, Juan Williams, Jeb Bush, and Fran Townsend. Kessler's Newsmax stories were instrumental in bringing to light Barack Obama's association with his radical minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. You can sign up for Kessler’s reports here.

Kessler has won sixteen journalism awards, including two George Polk awards—one for national reporting and one for community service. He won the top prize for business and financial reporting given by the Washington chapter of the Sigma Delta Chi society of professional journalists. Kessler has also won the American Political Science Association’s Public Affairs Reporting Award, the Associated Press’ Sevellon Brown Memorial Award, and Washingtonian magazine’s Washingtonian of the Year award. He is listed in Who’s Who in America.

Dave Rosenak is a successful Chicago executive, who has given a lot of thought to issues that the candidates are clearly avoiding - issues that are of major concern to all of us. Rosenak decided to take a proactive approach and offer some possible solutions of his own, all colorfully chronicled in his new book, Running Amok.

In a recent radio interview, Rosenak commented, "We must hold our presidential candidates' feet to the fire when it comes to viable solutions to the problems America faces today. Our forefathers established a government that was FOR and BY THE PEOPLE. The presidential candidates must take note of those issues that effect us all. We must become proactive in examining ways to control our borders. We must become proactive in solving our fuel crisis and helping our government discover renewable and affordable fuel resources. We cannot accept the failed policies of the past on such issues as immigration reform and health care, and We must require that the next president take a more effective approach in his or her foreign policies, and do everything possible to improve the image of our country that has become so blemished after entering the war in Iraq. We must demand from our congressmen and women that we put an end to the spending of the illions of dollars that taxpayers fork out on disputes for, and with other nations, while we ignore issues of importancehere at home, like poverty, health care and education. We do nothing when major corporations lay off thousands of American's to outsource manufacturing and customer services with countries who cannot even speak our language. We must do something to insure that generations to come will not inherit our sad legacy, or face an insurmountable mountain of debt!"

John Avlon is author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics [Random House, 2005]. He served as Chief Speechwriter and Deputy Policy Director for Rudy Giuliani's 2008 Presidential Campaign. Previously, he was a columnist and associate editor for the New York Sun.

Avlon was the youngest and longest-serving speechwriter in Mayor Giuliani's City Hall. After the attacks of September 11th, 2001, he and his team were responsible for writing the eulogies for all firefighters, police officers and emergency workers killed in the destruction of the World Trade Center. His essay on the attacks, "The Resilient City” concluded the anthology Empire City: New York through the Centuries and won acclaim as “the single best essay written in the wake of 9/11.”

Avlon has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and C-Span. He has spoken at the Yale, the Citadel, the Kennedy School of Government, the State Department"s visiting journalist program, and civic organizations around the nation.

In a profile, author Stephen Marshall wrote “Avlon talks about politics the way ESPN anchors wrap up sports highlights.” Columnist Kathleen Parker wrote, “Americans who are fed up with the Ann Coulter/Michael Moore school of debate and are looking for someone to articulate a commonsense, middle path, may have found their voice in John Avlon.”

He is the president of Prides Crossing Executive Communication and worked on Bill Clinton’s 1996 presidential campaign. His essay on the attacks of September 11 -- "The Resilient City," published in the anthology Empire City: New York Through the Centuries -- won acclaim from Fred Siegel, author of The Future Once Happened Here, as "the single best essay written in the wake of 9/11."

Dr. Walid Phares is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Middle East history and politics, global terrorist movements, democratization and human rights.  Dr. Phares also leads the foundation's Future of Terrorism Project, which considers how the Jihadi-Islamist threat will mutate over time and what can be done to defend against new, more deadly strains of terrorism.

Dr. Phares is the author of ten books on terrorism and the Middle East.  His latest book, The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad was published in 2008, War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy was published April, 2007. His book, Future Jihad, Terrorist Strategies Against America, has been listed on Foreign Policy magazine's best selling titles for three months. 

In addition, Dr. Phares serves as a Fox News Channel Middle East Contributor.  A fluent English, French, and Arabic speaker, he is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel, CNN, the BCC, al-Jazeera, al Hurra, al-Arabiya, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV,  Global TV, and hundreds of radio programs.  Previously Dr. Phares served as a terrorism analyst for MSNBC.  He writes frequently for academic publications and newspapers, including Global Affairs, Middle East Quarterly, International Journal of Security Studies, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Philadelphia Inquirer, National Review, and Chicago Sun Times. 

A frequently consulted expert, for more than two decades Dr. Phares has been called upon by European Commissioners, European Parliament members, as well as French, British, Belgian, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, and Cypriot legislators, officials and Diplomats. He has served as an expert for the Dutch Government on Terrorism. He has also testified to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Middle East and South East Asia, the House committees on international relations and Homeland Security and regularly conducts congressional, State Department, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice briefings.

Dr. Phares is also a senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy, a policy institute based in Brussels that is dedicated to defending democratic values, promoting freedom and addressing the ideologies of terrorism.

Dr. Phares is an Adjunct Professor at National Defense University School for National Security Executive Education (SNSEE). From 1993 to 2006, Dr. Phares was a professor of Middle East Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He has also held teaching positions at Florida International University and the University of Miami.  He holds degrees in law and political science from Saint Joseph and the Lebanese Universities in Beirut, a Masters in international law from the Universite de Lyons in France, and a Ph.D. in international relations and strategic studies from the University of Miami in the United States.