Kennedy was born in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, and attended St. Cuthbert's Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne. Subsequently, he graduated with first class honors in history from Newcastle University and obtained his doctorate from St. Antony's College, Oxford. He was a member of the History Department at the University of East Anglia between 1970 and 1983. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a former Visiting Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United States and of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. In 2007-8, Kennedy was the Phillipe Roman Professor of History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics. He is the J. Richardson Dilworth professor of British history at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. His most famous book, *The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers*, has been translated into 23 languages and assesses the interaction between economics and strategy over the past five centuries. The book was incredibly well received by fellow historians, with A.J.P. Taylor labelling it "An encyclopaedia in itself" and Sir Michael Howard crediting it as "a deeply humane book in the very best sense of the word". His most recent book is *The Parliament of Man*, in which he contemplates the past and future of the United Nations. He is on the editorial board of numerous scholarly journals and writes for T*he New York Times*, *The Atlantic*, and many foreign-language newspapers and magazines. His monthly column on current global issues is distributed worldwide by *the Los Angeles Times Syndicate*/Tribune Media Services. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2001. The National Maritime Museum awarded him its Caird Medal in 2005 for his contributions to naval history.

Katharine H.S. Moon is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Wellesley College. Moon received her B.A. from Smith College, magna cum laude, and her Ph.D. from Princeton University, Department of Politics. She was born in San Francisco. Moon is the author of Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations (Columbia University, 1997; Korean edition by Sam-in Publishing Co., 2002) and other publications on the U.S.-Korea alliance and social movements in Korea and Asia (e.g. democratization, women's movements, migrant workers, human rights). They are available in edited volumes and academic journals such as Asian Survey and The Journal of Asian Studies and Korean publications such as Changjak gwa Bipyeong,and Dangdae Bipyeong. Currently, Moon is completing a book manuscript Protesting America, Pursuing Democracy:Korean Civil Society in Alliance Politics (forthcoming, GAIA/University of California Press). Moon received a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in 2002 to conduct field research in Korea on this subject and was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University in 2002-03. Katharine Moon has served in the Office of the Senior Coordinator for Womens Issues in the U.S. Department of State and as a trustee of Smith College. She serves on the editorial board of several journals of international relations and consults for NGOs in the U.S. and Korea. She also serves on policy task forces designed to examine current U.S.-Korea relations and contributes op-eds to various media organizations.

Michael E. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow and director of research in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy. He directs the Strobe Talbott Center on Security, Strategy and Technology, as well as the Defense Industrial Base working group, and is the inaugural holder of the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy. He co-directs the Africa Security Initiative as well. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington universities, and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He also serves as a member of the Defense Policy Board at the U.S. Department of Defense. O’Hanlon was a member of the external advisory board at the Central Intelligence Agency from 2011-12. O'Hanlon's latest book, "Military History for the Modern Strategist: America's Major Wars Since 1861" (Brookings and Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) was published in January 2023. O’Hanlon’s other books include “_The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint_” (Yale, 2021); “_Defense 101: Understanding the Military of Today and Tomorrow_” (Cornell, 2021); “_The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War over Limited Stake_s” (Brookings, 2019); “B_eyond NATO: A New Security Architecture for Eastern Europe_” (Brookings, 2017); “_The Future of Land Warfare_” (Brookings, 2015); and “_Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: U.S.-China Relations in the 21st Century_” (with Jim Steinberg, Princeton University Press, 2014). He edited “_Brookings Big Ideas for America_” (Brookings, 2017). Previously, he wrote “_Crisis on the Korean Peninsula_” (with Mike Mochizuki, McGraw-Hill, 2003); “_Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo_” (with Ivo Daalder, Brookings, 2000); and about a dozen other books. O’Hanlon has written several hundred op-eds in major domestic and international newspapers. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Survival, Washington Quarterly, Joint Forces Quarterly, and International Security, among other publications. O’Hanlon has appeared on television or spoken on the radio more than 4,000 times since September 11, 2001. O'Hanlon was an analyst at the Congressional Budget Office from 1989-1994, where he won the Director’s Award in 1992. He also worked previously at the Institute for Defense Analyses. His doctorate from Princeton is in public and international affairs, where he was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship. His bachelor's and master's degrees, also from Princeton, are in the physical sciences. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1982-84, where he taught college and high school physics in French. Earlier, he worked on a dairy farm in Upstate New York, where he grew up, and attempted (unsuccessfully) with a team of Princeton experimental physicists in the “_Gravity Group_” to disprove Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

William I. Hitchcock teaches history at Temple University in Philadelphia. He was born in Fukuoka, Japan in 1965, and has lived in Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Paris, Brussels, Washington, DC, Boston and New Haven. He received his B.A. from Kenyon College in 1986 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1994. He taught at Yale for six years and won a teaching prize there. He has also taught at Wellesley College. He is the author of France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); co-editor, with Paul Kennedy, of From War to Peace: Altered Strategic Landscapes in the Twentieth Century (New Have: Yale University Press, 2000); and The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945-present (New York: Doubleday and Anchor, 2003-2004). [Source: http://authors.simonandschuster.com/William-I-Hitchcock/30158525/biography]