Jim Lehrer is the author of 18 previous novels, two memoirs, and three plays. Lehrer has been awarded top honors for his work as a reporter. He has won two Emmys, the Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, the George Foster Peabody Broadcast Award, and the William Allen White Foundation Award for Journalistic Merit.

Ray Suarez joined *The NewsHour* in October 1999 as a Washington-based Senior Correspondent. Suarez has more than thirty years of varied experience in the news business. He came to *The NewsHour* from National Public Radio where he had been host of the nationwide, call-in news program "Talk of the Nation" since 1993. Prior to that, he spent seven years covering local, national, and international stories for the NBC-owned station, WMAQ-TV in Chicago. He is the author most recently of a book examining the tightening relationship between religion and politics in America, *The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America*. Suarez also wrote *The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration* (Free Press), and has contributed to several other books, including *What We See* (New Village Press, 2010), *How I Learned English* (National Geographic, 2007), *Brooklyn: A State of Mind* (Workman, 2001), *Local Heroes* (Norton, 2000), *Saving America's Treasures* (National Geographic, 2000), and *Las Christmas* (Knopf, 1998). Suarez currently hosts the monthly radio program "America Abroad" for Public Radio International, and the weekly politics program "Destination Casa Blanca" for Hispanic Information Telecommunications Network, HITN TV.