Barbara Haber is the author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals, published by Simon and Schuster's Free Press and by Penguin in paperback. Haber has also written on food topics for Harvard Magazine, Yankee Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Dictionary of American History, Notable American Women and many other popular and professional publications, including Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking and From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies, which she co-edited with Arlene Avakian.

At the Radcliffe Institute's Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, Haber served as Curator of Books and developed a major collection of over 16,000 volumes on cooking and food. She also co-founded the Radcliffe Culinary Times and the Boston Culinary Historians. To further promote the study of food, she served as senior advisory editor and contributed chapters on culinary history to the Cambridge World History of Food and the Encyclopedia of the History of American Food and Beverages, published by Oxford University Press.

Barbara Haber currently serves on the governing board of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) and the awards board of the James Beard Foundation. She earlier served on the advisory board of the University of California Food and Culture series and its journal Gastronomica.

Haber has also been a consulting writer, speaker and advisor for public-relations agencies serving such organizations as Kraft Foods, McCormick, the Olive Oil Council, the Walnut Marketing Board, and the Chocolate Manufacturers of America, and for food-study groups seeking public funding.

Seen on Today, Martha Stewart Living and other TV programs and interviewed in such publications as Newsweek, the New York Times, and Bon Appetit, Barbara Haber has delighted thousands around the world with her fascinating stories of the special and often surprising ways that cooking and food have defined people's lives.

For her many contributions to the study of food, she received a Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America Award from the James Beard Foundation and the prestigious M.F.K Fisher Award from Les Dames D'Escoffier.

Dr. Crandall A. Shifflett, Project Director and originator of Virtual Jamestown (www.virtualjamestown.org), is Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Dr. Shifflett is the author of Coal Towns, winner of the Weatherford Award, and other books on southern and U.S. history, including Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South. In 1996, he conceived the idea of combining technology, history, and Jamestown 2007. Virtual Jamestown is part of "e-2007" plans to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Jamestown's founding. Dr. Shifflett was a participant in an NEH Summer Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2000 and co-directed an NEH Seminar for School Teachers at the Virginia Center for Digital History in 2001.

Nancy Carter Crump is the accomplished author of Hearthside Cooking: An Introduction to Virginia Plantation Cuisine [...] and many articles on colonial cookery. She has done numerous workshops on the subject of colonial and hearth cookery. Ms. Crump worked for several years for various historical sites around Virginia, including Evelynton Plantation in Charles City, VA; the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Chesterfield Historical Society, and taught colonial American and Virginia history at Rappahannock Community College.

Leni Ashmore Sorensen (Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.) earned her Ph.D. in American Studies at the College of William and Mary in December 2005. Her dissertation is titled "Absconded: Fugitive Slaves in the Daybook of the Richmond Police Guard, 1834-1844." She wrote an extended book review published in the December 2005 issue of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. In January 2006, she was hired as the African American Research Historian at Monticello, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

James I. Robertson, Jr. is Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at Virginia Tech and executive director of the university's Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. He appears regularly on Civil War-related television programs, including Arts & Entertainment Network, the History Channel, PBS, and NPR. Dr. Robertson has written dozens of books, from popular to scholarly, including Daily Life in Civil War America, Civil War Virginia, and Virginia at War, and other books on the daily lives of common soldiers.

Danielle Torisky is a professor of nutrition and Dietetics at James Madison University. Dr. Torisky's Civil War focus is in nutrition, health, and medicine for both soldiers and civilians. She has presented Civil War food and nutrition programs to the JMU Civil War Institute, Shenandoah Valley Civil War Roundtable, Society for Port Republic Preservationists, Elkton Middle School, Shenandoah Valley Mountain Culture Symposium, James Madison University History Department, JMU Graduate Dietetics Program Research Seminar, Blue Ridge Dietetic Association Journal Club, the U.S. Joint Military Intelligence College, the Society of Civil War Surgeons, and Virginia Family and Consumer Educators. Her "Hospital Diet Kitchen" poster display was exhibited in the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in April of 1997. She has given Civil War nutrition poster presentations at both Virginia Dietetic Association and American Dietetic Association annual meetings, and conducts a yearly lecture/workshop on Civil War dietetics. She published articles on the Civil War and nutrition, incuding "Quantity Feeding in the American Civil War" and "Comfort Foods and Food Remedies in the 19th Century" in the book, Portals to Shenandoah Valley Folkways.

CiCi Williamson is the author of six cookbooks and more than 1,500 articles in newspapers and magazines. Her latest book is "The Best of Virginia Farms," a cookbook, tour book and history reference. She is also the host of an award-winning Virginia PBS-TV series based on the book. Before concentrating on book writing and culinary history, she wrote a syndicated weekly food column for 22 years in 160 newspapers across the country. CiCi has a B.S. in home economics from the University of Maryland, and has created almost 2,000 original recipes for publication. She has served as an officer of many culinary associations including president of the prestigious 1,100-member Les Dames d'Escoffier International, board member of the Association of Food Journalists, president of Home Economists in Business, and co-editor of CHoW Line, the newsletter of the Culinary Historians of Washington. As a travel writer and photographer, she has visited all seven continents, more than 90 countries, and all 50 U.S. states.

John Egerton is a free-lance reporter, with expertise in Southern foodways and Civil Rights. Egerton has written or edited eleven non-fiction books, including Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, and in History. His articles on food and a variety of other subjects have appeared in many publications, including The Washington Post, Saturday Review, The New York Times Magazine, The Charlotte Observer, the St. Petersburg Times, and Southern Magazine. He is one of the founding members of the Southern Foodways Alliance and edited the first volume on Southern food writing, Cornbread Nation 1.

Nikki Giovanni, poet and professor, Caldecott Medal Honor winner and University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech: "The Only True Lovers are Chefs, or Happy Birthday, Edna Lewis"

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