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

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.

Massimo Pigliucci is a professor at The City College of New York who has published 194 technical papers in science and philosophy and is the author or editor of 23 books. He is best known for the bestselling How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books). He holds a PhD in evolutionary biology and has also worked as a producer, director, and writer.

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

James Madison, the pen name of Charles Aronstein (August 27, 1870 – March 27, 1943), was an American theatre manager, writer, and publisher, best known for writing and publishing the periodical *Madison's Budget*.