William Deverell is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at USC and Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. He has published numerous books on the history of California and the American West, including Whitewashed Adobe, A Companion to Los Angeles, and A Companion to California History.
 
Anne F. Hyde is Professor of History at Colorado College. She has published widely in the history of the American West. Her most recent book, Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800–1860, won the Bancroft Prize and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.