Mark Dawidziak has been the television critic at The Plain Dealer since 1999. A theater, film, and television reviewer for thirty years, his many nonfiction books include The Barter Theatre Story: Love Made Visible, The Columbo Phile: A Casebook, Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing, The Night Stalker Companion: A 25th Anniversary Tribute, Horton Foote's The Shape of the River The Lost Teleplay about Mark Twain, and The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula. He is also a novelist and a playwright.

Ken Burns has been making documentary films since the early 1980s. He has directed and produced some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The War, and The West. The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of Burns's films: "More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source."