J. Bottum is the "Books and Arts" editor of the Weekly Standard. A native of South Dakota, he is a graduate of Georgetown University, with a Ph.D. in medieval philosophy from Boston College. In addition to his duties at the Weekly Standard, Mr. Bottum is the poetry editor of the journal First Things and host of Book Talk, a weekly radio program syndicated to more than thirty stations around the country. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Commentary, National Review, Philosophy and Literature, the Wilson Quarterly, and many other newspapers, magazines, and journals. His book The Fall and Other Poems has just been issued by St. Augustine’s Press.

Michael Novak currently holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at AEI. He graduated from Stonehill College (B.A., philosophy and English) and the Gregorian University (B.A., theology). He continued theological studies at Catholic University and then at Harvard, where he received an M.A. in history and the philosophy of religion. Mr. Novak has written more than twenty-five books on the philosophy and theology of culture, especially the essential elements of a free society. His writings have appeared in every major Western language, as well as in Bengali, Korean and Japanese. His most recent book, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, was released by Encounter Books in 2001.