Johanna Neuman's latest book, And Yet They Persisted: How American Women Won the Right to Vote, tells the story of how women fought for two centuries—from the revolutionary war to the civil rights era—for the vote. As the nation celebrates the centennial of the 19th Amendment, this book reminds us that the abiding attribute needed for social change is persistence. An earlier book, Gilded Suffragists, tells the story more than 200 women of enormous wealth who joined the fight to win women the right to vote. With names like Astor, Belmont and Vanderbilt, they were the media darlings of their day, covered for every excess of fashion and decor. And when they risked their social standing to win the vote for women, it was like Oprah Winfrey blessing a cause today. It popularized the movement. An award-winning journalist with 30 years of experience in Washington, D.C. covering the news for major national newspapers, Johanna recently earned a PhD in history at American University. She is already at work on her second history book, a look at the fight between militants and moderates during the suffrage struggle.

Ronald Harold Nessen is an American government official who served as White House Press Secretary for President Gerald Ford from 1974 to 1977. He replaced Jerald terHorst, who resigned in the wake of President Ford's pardon of former president Richard Nixon. Prior to joining the Ford administration, Nessen served as a Washington, D.C. correspondent for NBC News. On the day of Ford's succession to the presidency, August 9, 1974, he provided commentary for the inauguration. He also covered the President in a report broadcast that evening on NBC Nightly News. In that piece, Nessen reported on the appointment of terHorst, the man whom he himself would succeed one month later. Nessen, who also served NBC News as a war correspondent during the Vietnam War, was seriously wounded by grenade fragments while on patrol outside Pleiku in the Central Highlands in July 1966.