George R. Stewart (1895-1980) was born in Pennsylvania and educated at Princeton. He received his Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia in 1922 and joined the English faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1924. He was a sociologist, toponymist, and founding member of the American Name Society, and the author of more than twenty books, including Storm and Names on the Land, both available in the NYRB Classics series.

Emma Rothschild is an economic historian who currently serves as the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University. She has published five books, most of which cover economic European history and the development of economic thought.