Roger Shattuck (1923-2005) was born in New York City, studied at Yale, and taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, and Boston University. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, he was the author of The Banquet Years, The Innocent Eye, Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, and Marcel Proust, which was awarded the National Book Award in 1975. His book The Forbidden Experiment (2025) and his edition of Helen Keller's The World I Live In (2004) are published by NYRB Classics.

Jed Perl is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His books include Paris Without End, New Art City, Magicians and Charlatans, Antoine's Alphabet, a two-volume biography of Alexander Calder, and, most recently, Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts. Perl was a contributing editor at Vogue for a decade and the art critic at The New Republic for twenty years.