Timothy Egan works for The New York Times as a national enterprise correspondent. He was part of a team of reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for the paper's series on racial attitudes in modern America. He is the author of four books, the most recent of which, The Worst Hard Time: The Hidden Story of People Who Experienced the Great American Dust Bowl (2006), won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2006. Amy Pastan, a former editor and researcher at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, is now an independent editor and scholar. W. has written the preface. The Library of Congress's director of publishing, Ralph Eubanks.