James J. Connolly is associate professor of history and acting director of the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University. He is the author of The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900-1925 (1998) and numerous articles and essays on American urban politics. He is currently at work on a book entitled, "Democratic Visions: The Urban Political Imagination in Industrializing America."

Maureen A. Flanagan is professor of history at Michigan State University. In 2000-2003, she served as the founding editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Her latest book is Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933 (2002).

Murney Gerlach has been director of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center and, before that, of the Rhode Island Historical Society. With a D. Phil. from Oxford University, Dr. Gerlach has research interests including British-American relations and transatlantic intellectual history. His writings include British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social Thought in the Late-Victorian Age (2001).

Deirdre M. Moloney is associate professor of history at St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania. She is the author of American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era (2002).

Kevin B. Sheets is assistant professor of history at the State University of New York, College at Cortland. He received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia. Currently, he is project director for "Crossroads of Change," a Teaching American History grant funded through the U.S. Department of Education.

Kerry Soper received a B.F.A. in commercial art from Utah State University and then pursued his Ph.D. in American Studies at Emory University, where he focused on the history of satire in popular comic mediums. He is currently an assistant professor at Brigham Young University, where he teaches in the Humanities and American Studies programs. Also a cartoonist, Dr. Soper received the Charles M. Schultz award in 1990 for outstanding college cartoonist in the nation and currently publishes pieces in academic and professional venues such as the Chronicle of Higher Education.