2010 Presenters
Susan Abulhawa
The founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, an NGO that builds playgroups in Palestinian territories and refugee camps, Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin, “a richly-detailed, beautiful, and resonant novel."
Caroline Alexander
A writer for The New Yorker and National Geographic, Caroline Alexander is the author of three books including The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War, "a spectacular and constantly surprising new book."
Tom Ashbrook
Host of the nationally syndicated radio program On Point, Tom Ashbrook is an award-winning journalist whose career spans more than twenty years, serving as a foreign correspondent and deputy managing editor for the Boston Globe, before joining NPR and WBUR in 2001.
Helene Atwan
Since 1995, Helene Atwan has served as the director of Beacon Press, a Boston-based independent publisher. She is responsible for the acquisition and publication of numerous award-winning books including ten volumes of poetry by Pulitzer-prize winner Mary Oliver.
Brunonia Barry
Brunonia Barry made her literary debut with The Lace Reader. About her new novel, The Map of True Places, Library Journal says “readers will be perched on the edge of their seats while consuming this mesmerizing, suspenseful tale.”
Kate Bernheimer
Founder and editor of Fairy Tale Review, Kate Bernheimer is a novelist and short story writer, as well as the editor of My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, a new collection of modern fairy tales.
Lisa Birnbach
Lisa Birnbach is the editor and co-author of the 1980 phenomenon The Official Preppy Handbook, which spent 38 weeks at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. In True Prep: It’s a Whole New Old World, she offers a new take on prepdom.
Jared Bowen
Jared Bowen is an Emmy-winning reporter with WGBH-TV’s nightly news magazine program, “Greater Boston” with Emily Rooney, covering everything from breaking news to arts and culture.
Howard Bryant
Howard Bryant, a regular on ESPN.com and a sports commentator for NPR's Weekend Edition, is the author of Shut Out: A History of Race and Baseball in Boston and The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron.
Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson is a bestselling author of humorous books on travel, American life, and nature. His titles include A Walk in the Woods, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, In a Sunburned Country, and A Short History of Nearly Everything. His new book is At Home: A Short History Of Private Life.
Thanassis Cambanis
Thanassis Cambanis is a correspondent at-large in the Mideast for Global Post and has covered Iraq and the Middle East for various publications since 2003. His new book, A Privilege To Die, takes an in-depth look at Hezbollah.
Nicholas Carr
Nicholas Carr writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology. He is the author of The Big Switch and The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, which argues that the Net is rerouting our neural pathways, turning readers into screen watchers.
Kristin Cashore
Kristin Cashore holds a master’s in Children’s Literature from Simmons College and is the author of the New York Times bestselling books Graceling and Fire, both of which have been named Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association.
Noni Carter
An accomplished classical pianist and poet and a sophomore at Harvard, 19 year-old Noni Carter has made her literary debut with her novel Good Fortune, a slave narrative woven through the remembrances of Ayanna Bahati, an African-American slave in the 19th century.
Richard Cohen
Richard Cohen is a former Olympic fencer and the author of By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions and Chasing The Sun, which relates the cultural and scientific history of the star at the center of our solar system.
Justin Cronin
Justin Cronin is the author of The Summer Guest and Mary and O’Neil, winner of the 2002 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Stephen Crane Prize. His new novel, The Passage, has been called “an enthralling entertaining story… a gift” by Stephen King.
Jef Czekaj
Jef Czekaj is an award-winning cartoonist, children’s book author and illustrator, musician and hip hop DJ. His adventure comic strip, Grandpa and Julie: Shark Hunters, is read by more than 1 million children every month. Hip and Hop Don’t Stop! is his first picture book.
Kathryn Davis
Kathryn Davis is senior fiction writer-in-residence at Washington University in St. Louis. A contributor to the new fairy tale collection, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, she is the recipient of the Kafka Prize.
Alan Dershowitz
Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz has published numerous articles, books and novels on criminal and constitutional law, including his newest novel, The Trials of Zion.
Elyssa East
Elyssa East is the author of Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town, for which she was recently awarded the 2009 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award for the best work of non-fiction by a New England author.
David Edwards
David Edwards is the founding director of Le Laboratoire in Paris and teaches at Harvard University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In his book The Lab, he offers a manifesto of a new innovation model driven by the arts.
Hallie Ephron
Hallie Ephron is an award-winning mystery book reviewer for the Boston Globe and the bestselling author of 1001 Books for Every Mood and Writing and Selling Your Mystery, which was nominated for both an Edgar and an Anthony Award. Her newest novel is Never Tell A Lie.
Timothy Basil Ering
Timothy Basil Ering is a children’s book author and illustrator whose solo work includes The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone. He is the illustrator of the Newbury Award-winning The Tale of Despereaux and Marilyn Nelson’s Snook Alone.
Haleh Esfandiari
Haleh Esfandiari is the author of My Prison, My Home, her memoir about the four months she spent in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin Prison in 2007. She is currently the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
Noah Feldman
Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman was senior constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He is the author of five books, including Fall and Rise of the Islamic State and Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices.
Joshua Ferris
Joshua Ferris's first novel, Then We Came to the End, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a National Book Award finalist. The New Yorker referred to Ferris’s prose in his latest novel, The Unnamed, as “brash, extravagant, and, near the end, chillingly beautiful.”
Tyler Florence
Host of the Food Network’s "Tyler’s Ultimate," Tyler Florence is a chef, restauranteur, and the author of five bestselling cookbooks including Eat This Book, Real Kitchen, and his newest Tyler Florence Family Meals.
Nick Flynn
Nick Flynn’s first memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. Upon reading The Ticking is the Bomb, one reviewer noted: “It's rare that a piece of writing can speak so openly and engage so deeply with our hopes and fears."
Alexis Frederick-Frost
A Center for Cartoon Studies graduate, Alexis Frederick-Frost is the co-author of Adventures in Cartooning: How to Turn Your Doodles Into Comics, a Booklist Top Ten Art Books for Kids and a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.
Stefanie Friedhoff
A freelance journalist, Stefanie Friedhoff is projects manager at Harvard's Nieman Foundation, where she organizes interdisciplinary conferences and directs the specialized fellowship in Global Health Reporting.
Atul Gawande
Atul Gawande is an Associate Professor at Harvard, a surgeon, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a bestselling author, whose latest book, The Checklist Manifesto, explores how the lowly checklist has revolutionized the practice of medicine and saved lives.
Robin Preiss Glasser
Robin Preiss Glasser has worked with numerous renowned authors, illustrating more than 30 books for children during her career. Her newest collaboration is the bestselling picture book series, Fancy Nancy.
Myla Goldberg
Myla Goldberg is the author of Wickett’s Remedy, which Library Journal called “an epic story that is sure to become a classic.” She is also the author of the bestselling Bee Season, which was a New York Times Notable Book for 2000. Her new novel is The False Friend.
Christina Gonzalez
Based on the experiences of the unaccompanied minors who came to the U.S. from Cuba through Operation Pedro Pan, The Red Umbrella is Christina Gonzalez’s debut novel.
Allegra Goodman
Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen" by USA Today, Allegra Goodman is the author of seven novels including Kaaterskill Falls, a National Book Award finalist, Intuition, and The Cookbook Collector.
Andrew Gross
Co-author, with James Patterson, of six New York Times bestsellers, Andrew Gross is the author of Don’t Look Twice, The Dark Tide and his “bold, brainy and chilling” new novel, Reckless, which Lee Child calls “an automatic must-read.”
Jennifer Haigh
A PEN/Hemingway Foundation and PEN/L. L. Winship Award-winning novelist, Jennifer Haigh is the author of Mrs. Kimble, Baker Towers and The Condition, which Publisher’s Weekly called "poignant. . . . A strong nod to the healing power of love."
Eric Haseltine
Eric Haseltine, Ph.D., is a former intelligence officer and entertainment executive who was formally trained as a neuroscientist. He is the author of the book, Long Fuse, Big Bang: Achieving Success Through Daily Victories.
Edward Hirsch
Poet Edward Hirsch’s books include the NBCC award winning Wild Gratitude and How To Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. As one reviewer puts it, “he not only gets better with each new book; he also provides a kind of model for the growth of poetic intelligence.”
James Hirsch
A former reporter for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, James Hirsch is the author of four books of nonfiction including the New York Times bestsellers, Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter and Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend.
Erica Hirshler
Erica Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A much sought-after lecturer on American Impressionism, her most recent book, Sargent's Daughters, explores the multitude of ways to look at one of John Singer Sargent’s most famous paintings.
Tony Hiss
A staff writer at The New Yorker for more than thirty years, Tony Hiss is a visiting scholar at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Experience of Place and his newest, In Motion: The Experience of Travel.
A. M. Homes
A.M. Homes is the author of the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, The End of Alice and The Mistress’s Daughter as well as the short-story collection Things You Should Know. Formerly a writer/producer for The L Word, she is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
Ann Hood
Ann Hood is the author of ten books including The Knitting Circle and Comfort. Of Hood’s new novel, Jodi Picoult raves “Is there anyone who can write about the connections between ordinary people as well as Ann Hood does? The Red Thread is a beautifully rendered piece of art.”
Michelle Hoover
Michelle Hoover teaches writing at Grub Street and at Boston University, and her short fiction has been published in numerous collections including Best New American Voices. Selected as one of Poets & Writers’ debut fiction picks of 2010, The Quickening is Hoover’s first novel.
Joel Hyatt
Joel Z Hyatt is the co-founder with Al Gore of Current TV and Current.com. Previously, he co-founded and ran Hyatt Legal Services, which helped to revolutionize the distribution of legal services by making legal care affordable and accessible to middle and lower income families.
Marlon James
“Jamaica’s answer to Junot Díaz, Edwidge Danticat, and Zadie Smith,” Marlon James holds a degree in literature from the University of the West Indies. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Gish Jen
Novelist and short story writer, Gish Jen is the author of the international bestsellers Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, Who’s Irish?, and The Love Wife. Amy Tan calls her writing “both hilariously funny and seriously important.” Her new novel is World & Town.
Steven Johnson
Steven Johnson is a contributing editor at Wired and an advocate for the educational value of television and computer games. He is the author of six books including The Invention of Air, Everything Bad Is Good For You, and Where Good Ideas Come From.
Peter Kadzis
Peter Kadzis has worked at the Boston Phoenix for more than 22 years, most of them as editor or executive editor. He is a political commentator for Fox25 news, and a contributor to WGBH radio.
Meg Kearney
Meg Kearney is director of the Solstice Creative Writing Programs at Pine Manor College and author of the 2010 PEN New England/L.L. Winship award winning poetry collection Home By Now.
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly helped launch Wired magazine in 1993 and served as its executive editor for nearly seven years. The bestselling author of New Rules for the New Economy and Out of Control, his provocative and controversial new book is What Technology Wants.
Chip Kidd
Editor-at-large for Pantheon and associate art director for Alfred A. Knopf, Chip Kidd has been called “the closest thing to a rock star” in graphic design by USA Today. The author of two novels, he is a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s, Vogue, and The New York Times, and co-author of True Prep.
Jeff Kinney
Jeff Kinney is the author and illustrator of the popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series, which has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide since 2007 and was released as a major motion picture in March. In 2009, Kinney was named one of Time's 100 "Most Influential People" in the world.
Jarrett Krosoczka
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Jarrett Krosoczka is the author/illustrator of eight picture books including Punk Farm, and the Lunch Lady graphic novel series. In 2003, he was chosen by Print as one of their 20 top new visual artists under 30.
Eric Kuhne
Eric Kuhne is the owner and founder of CivicArts/Eric R. Kuhne and Associates, a research and design firm dedicated to reunifying civic arts, landscape, and architecture. CivicArts strives to include an element of storytelling in all its designs.
Kathryn Lasky
Kathryn Lasky is the Newbury Medal-winning author of more than 100 books for children including the nonfiction titles Beyond the Burning Time and True North and the bestselling fantasy series The Guardians of Ga’Hoole, soon to be a major motion picture.
Dennis Lehane
Dennis Lehane is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island, and most recently The Given Day. He has also written the introduction to a reissue of George V. Higgins' The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
Marianne Leone
A screenwriter and essayist, Marianne Leone is also a film and television actress best known for her role on “The Sopranos.” Her first book, Knowing Jesse is “the passion-filled memoir of her fight to give her disabled son the life he deserved.”
Rose Lewis
A photographer and former award-winning producer for WCVB-TV, Rose Lewis is an adoption advocate and the author of the bestselling picture books I Love You Like Crazy Cakes and her newest Orange Peel’s Pocket.
Brian Lies
Brian Lies has illustrated more than 20 books for children, and has written and illustrated four books, including Bats at the Library, Bats at the Beach, and Bats at the Ballgame, which have all been New York Times bestsellers.
Kelly Link
Winner of Nebula and Hugo Awards, Kelly Link is the author of Pretty Monsters and Magic for Beginners. She is co-founder and co-editor of Small Beer Press and of the zine Lady Churchill Rosebud's Wristlet.
Bill Littlefield
The winner of six Associated Press Awards, Bill Littlefield, a nationally-recognized author and sports commentator, hosts WBUR and National Public Radio’s "Only a Game," a weekly one-hour sports magazine.
Scott Magoon
Scott Magoon is the illustrator of Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Spoon, Tammi Sauer's Mostly Monsterly as well as A. W. Flaherty's The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster. His solo books include Mystery Ride and I've Painted Everything.
Megan Marshall
Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Megan Marshall is a professor in the MFA program at Emerson College and the author of The Peabody Sisters.
Simon Mawer
Simon Mawer is the author of ten books including Swimming to Ithaca and The Gospel of Judas. His latest novel, The Glass Room, was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Andrew McAfee
Author of Enterprise 2.0, Andrew McAfee is a principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Jill McDonough
Jill McDonough’s poems have appeared in Slate magazine, The Threepenny Review, and The New Republic among others. Her new book, Habeas Corpus, is “a collection of striking, absorbing poetry… a unique and necessary debut.”
Richard Michelson
Winner of the 2009 Sydney Taylor Gold Medal, Richard Michelson is the author of numerous picture books including Busing Brewster, which "provides an immediate, child’s-eye view of court-ordered busing in the 1970s."
Mark Moffett
Mark Moffet, “the Indiana Jones of entomology,” is a research associate at the Smithsonian. With a PhD from E. O. Wilson at Harvard, he is a regular contributor to National Geographic. His new book is Adventures Among Ants.
Nick Montfort
A critic, theorist, and scholar of computational art and media, Nick Montfort is associate professor of digital media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he writes computational and constrained poetry and develops computer games.
Dambisa Moyo
Born in Zambia, Dambisa Moyo holds a Ph.D in Economics from Oxford University. She was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time and is the author of Dead Aid.
Nicholas Negroponte
Professor of Media Technology at MIT, Nicolas Negroponte is founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child, co-founder and director of MIT's Media Laboratory and bestselling author of Being Digital.
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of Them, which won the National Book Award in 1970, and Black Water, What I Lived For, and Blonde were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her new short story collection is Sourland.
Jane O’Connor
Jane O’Connor is the author of more than thirty books for children including the Fancy Nancy series, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser, which remained on the New York Times picture book bestseller list for 98 weeks after it was first published in 2005.
Neri Oxman
Named one of the 100 most creative people by Fast Company, Neri Oxman is a designer and researcher whose work establishes a new approach to design at the interface of computer science, material engineering and ecology.
Mitali Perkins
Born in India, Mitali Perkins lived in Ghana, Cameroon, London, Mexico, New York and California by the time she was 13. She is the bestselling author of The Secret Keeper, which Kirkus Reviews called “achingly realistic,” and the critically-acclaimed The Bamboo People.
Tom Perrotta
Tom Perrotta is the author of six works of fiction including the bestselling novels Election, Joe College, Little Children, and The Abstinence Teacher. Both Election (1999) and Little Children (2006) have been made into acclaimed feature films.
Michael E. Porter
Michael Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School. He is the author of 18 books and more than 125 articles, including Redefining Healthcare: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results and On Competition.
Henriette Lazaridis Power
Rhodes Scholar, former Harvard professor, and novelist, Henriette Lazaridis Power is the founding editor of The Drum, a literary magazine for your ears, publishing fiction and essays in audio form.
William Powers
Former Washington Post columnist and winner of the National Press Club’s award for best American media commentary, William Powers is the author of Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.
David Rakoff
A regular contributor to NPR's "This American Life" and a writer-at-large for GQ, David Rakoff’s most recent book is Half Empty, in which he defends the commonsensical notion that you should always assume the worst, because then you’ll never be disappointed.
Joanna Smith Rakoff
Joanna Smith Rakoff is the author of the debut novel A Fortunate Age, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, Booklist best book of 2009, and winner of the Elle Readers’ Prize and the Goldberg Prize for Emerging Fiction.
Aaron Renier
Aaron Renier is the winner of the Eisner Award for his first graphic novel, Spiral-Bound. His new book for middle grade readers, “a rip-roaring, wild-eyed, high-sea adventure story," is The Unsinkable Walker Bean.
John Rich
Former Boston Public Health Commission medical director and founder of the Young Men's Health Clinic, Dr. John Rich is chair of Drexel University's Department of Health Management and Policy.
Moshe Safdi
Following his apprenticeship with Louis I. Kahn, Moshe Safdie developed the master plan for the 1967 World Exhibition in Montreal. Safdie's recent work includes Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport.
Faith Salie
A television and radio host, commentator, interviewer, “ethics expert,” actor, comedian, and journalist, Faith Salie was the executive producer and host of National Public Radio's “Fair Game from PRI with Faith Salie.”
Michael Sandel
Professor of Government at Harvard, Michael Sandel is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, which relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of our time.
Stacy Schiff
Stacy Schiff is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, Véra, and Saint-Exupéry, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest is Cleopatra.
Juliet Schor
Boston College Professor of Sociology, Juliet Schor is the author of The Overworked American, as well as the “fresh, persuasive, and passionately argued” Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth.
Kathryn Schulz
A New York-based journalist, Kathryn Schulz is the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error and the person behind The Wrong Stuff, a blog on Slate that features interviews with high-profile people about their relationship to being wrong.
Rob Scotton
Rob Scotton is the author and illustrator of the bestselling Russell the Sheep and Splat the Cat picture book series. His work can also be found on greeting cards, ceramics, textiles, prints, stationery, and glassware.
Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to welfare economics. In The Idea of Justice, he presents an alternative approach to mainstream theories of justice.
David Shields
David Shields is the author of Black Planet, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto he declares that the novel as we know it is dead.
Brando Skyhorse
Brando Skyhorse is a graduate of Stanford University and of the MFA Writers’ Workshop program at UC Irvine. His debut novel, The Madonnas of Echo Park, chronicles the “American-born immigrant” experience.
Jessica Stern
Jessica Stern lectures on terrorism at Harvard University and is a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. She is the author of Terror in the Name of God and Denial, her memoir in which she examines her own unsolved adolescent sexual assault.
Joseph Stiglitz
Recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University and Chair of Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought. His latest book is Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.
Francisco Stork
Born in Mexico and a graduate of Columbia Law School, Francisco Stork is the author of the bestselling young adult novels The Way of the Jaguar, Marcelo in the Real World and his newest, The Last Summer of the Death Warriors.
Sir Peter Stothard
Sir Peter Stothard is the former editor of The Times, which reached a circulation of more than 900,000 during his tenure. Currently serving as the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, he is the author of Spartacus Road.
Maria Tatar
Maria Tatar is Professor of Folklore & Mythology and Germanic Languages & Literatures at Harvard University, and editor of numerous collections including The Annotated Brothers Grimm and the new collection, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.
Lionel Vital
Lionel Vital, who currently serves on the board of Li!, Li!, Li!, a literacy project in Haiti, is also the inspiration for the character TiFre in Youme Landowne's book Sélavi: That Is Life: A Haitian Story of Hope.
Jerald Walker
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jerald Walker is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Emerson College. His newest book is Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption.
Ellen Doré Watson
Hailed by Library Journal as one of the "24 Poets for the 21st Century," Ellen Doré Watson is the author of numerous poetry collections including Dogged Hearts. She is Poetry and Translation Editor for The Massachusetts Review and is Director of The Poetry Center at Smith College.
E. O. Wilson
Regarded as on of the world’s preeminent biologists and naturalists, E. O. Wilson is professor of biology at Harvard University, and the author of more than twenty books, including two Pulitzer Prize winners, The Ants and On Human Nature. Anthill is his first novel.
Raffi Yessayan
The former chief of the Gang Unit at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, Raffi Yessayan is the author of the novels 2 in the Hat and 8 in the Box, which Dennis Lehane called “a terrific down-and-dirty crime novel that reeks of street authenticity.”
Kevin Young
Kevin Young is the award-winning author of six books of poetry, including Dear Darkness and Jelly Roll: A Blues, a finalist for the National Book Award. Young's latest work is the anthology The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing.
Da Zheng
Da Zheng is associate professor of English at Suffolk University and the author of Chiang Yee, a cultural biography of the painter, poet, scholar and exile, who was a literary fixture in the West during and after World War II.
