Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher and writer who started his career as a classical philologist and turned to philosophy early in his academic career.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elder, also known as Seneca the Rhetorician, was a Roman writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Corduba, Hispania.

French aristocrat and political thinker Alexis Charles Henri de Tocqueville transformed how the world understood democracy through his keen observations of 19th-century America.

Alexander Hamilton was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, an instrumental promoter of the U.S. Constitution, and founder of the nation's financial system. He co-wrote the 85 Federalist Papers essays (under the pseudonym "Publius") with James Madison and John Jay between October 1787 and May 1788, and published early political writings including *A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress* and *The Farmer Refuted*.