More What If?: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been Paperback – 7 Mar. 2003

Robert Katz

Robert Katz is the author of twelve books and eight screenplays, including three adaptations from his own works: Death in Rome, The Cassandra Crossing, and Days of Wrath.

Death in Rome, which the Chicago Tribune called a "masterpiece of literature [and] a masterpiece of historical scholarship," was a worldwide bestseller published in twenty edi¬tions and ten languages. A study of the World War II Ardeatine Caves Massacre, it became an international cause célèbre culminating in a ten year freedom of speech court battle involving the Vatican. He has written extensively on this period and among his other publications are Black Sabbath: A Journey Through a Crime Against Humanity, a study of the roundup and deportation to Auschwitz of the Jews of Rome.

His most recent work, The Battle for Rome, a history of Nazi-occupied Rome, was praised by The New York Times as "a poignant, dramatic and definitive account..."

Days of Wrath is an investigative report on the terrorist kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, the Italian statesman. Reviewing Days of Wrath, the Washington Post wrote: "anyone who can be moved by the pity and terror of a modern tragedy will want to read this original and passionately heartfelt book." The book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; the film version won a Golden Globe and represented Italy in the main competition of the 1987 Berlin Film Festival, where it received a Silver Bear award.

His articles, short stories, and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout the world. He has been a consultant to CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC's PrimeTime Live and Italian television's RAI network news magazine Mixer.

In 1991 he was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Both as author and screenwriter, Mr. Katz has been a guest lecturer on many university campuses in the U.S. and abroad. Between 1986 and 1992, he was a frequent visiting professor in investigative journalism at the University of California at Santa Cruz. A Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is a former grantee of the American Council of Learned Societies and has twice been elected a Knight of Mark Twain. His official web site is www.theboot.it

Caleb Carr is an American novelist and military historian. He has worked at the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs Quarterly, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and taught military history, including World Military History, the History of American Intelligence, and Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, at Bard College.

He was born in Manhattan, and for the majority of his life he lived on the Lower East Side of that city, spending his summers and many weekends at his family's home in Cherry Plain, New York. In 2000, he purchased his own property, known as Misery Mountain, in Cherry Plain; and in 2006 he moved there permanently.

He was educated at St. Luke's School and Friends Seminary in New York, Kenyon College, and New York University, where he gained a degree in Military and Diplomatic History.

He is the author of ten books, several of which, most notably the historical thriller The Alienist, have become international best-sellers and prize-winners, and his work has been translated into over two dozen languages. His book, The Lessons of Terror, concerned one of his non-fiction areas of specialization, terrorism, and became a controversial yet standard volume in the literature of that subject.

He has appeared before the House Joint Subcommittee on National Security, was a featured speaker at a closed-door Defense Department conference on the War on Terrorism, and made regular appearances on almost all television networks during the American invasion of Iraq.

Asked what fiction writers have influenced him the most, he includes Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling, William Gibson, and Michael Crichton.

His non-fiction influences he cites as "eclectic and too numerous to list."

Carr has also worked extensively in the theater, and in movies and televison; in the latter capacity, he spent several years in Los Angeles; his last feature script attracted Liam Neeson, John Frankenheimer, and Vittorio Storaro to sign on; when Frankenheimer suddenly and tragically died, however, the project fell apart, and Carr returned to New York.

In 2015, Paramount Television announced that it would create a series based on The Alienist for Turner Network Television (TNT), the first season to be directed by Cary Fukunaga.

He now lives with his Siberian cat, Masha. She is, he says, "very beautiful and very ferocious."

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