Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was born in Virginia but grew up in Augusta, Georgia, where his father was an official of the Southern Presbyterian church. After briefly practicing as a lawyer (he only had two clients, one of whom was his mother), he attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins and taught history and political science at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton, his alma mater. As Princeton’s president, he developed a reputation as a reformer for trying to eliminate the school’s elitist system of teaching...

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was an American author who acted as an informal leader of expatriate and European writers and artists in Paris during the first half of the early twentieth century. Stein spent much her youth in Oakland, California. She moved to Europe with her brother after leaving medical school at Johns Hopkins, stopping in London before settling in Paris. In Paris, Stein met Alice B. Toklas, who would become her lifelong companion. The two women associated with various writers and artists Stein called the “Lost Generation.”...

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) was a Democratic politician from Nebraska whose support for free silver, income tax, and other reforms won him the support of the Populist Party. Bryan was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1890, and in 1896 he was nominated for president after delivering his “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic convention. Though he had the backing of the Democratic Party, the Populist Party, and free silver Republicans, Bryan lost the election by a large margin to William McKinley. Bryan ran and lost...