Russell Shorto Johnstown, United States, 1959

He graduated in 1981 from George Washington University. Historian and journalist, he is a contributor to the New York Times Magazine. Between 2008 and 2013 he was director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam, where he lived for six years, from 2007 to 2013. In September 2009 he was appointed member, with the title of Dutch knight, of the Order of Orange-Nassau in recognition of the role that his publications and his work at the head of the John Adams Institute had in strengthening relations between the Netherlands and the United States. He is the author of Saints and Madmen, Gospel Truth, Descartes' Bones, and Manhattan. The Secret History of New York (2011).