First: Sandra Day O'connor

About the author:

Evan Thomas has been assistant managing editor at Newsweek since 1991. He is the magazine’s lead writer on major news stories and the author of many longer features, including Newsweek’s special behind-the-scenes issues on presidential elections and more than a hundred cover stories. Thomas was pivotal in spearheading Newsweek’s award-winning coverage on the war on terror from the Washington bureau. His reporting and writing on the terror events of September 11 and the Iraq war contributed to the magazine’s being honored with the most prestigious awards in the magazine industry—the National Magazine Award for General Excellence for 2002 and 2004. In 2005, his 50,000-word narrative of the 2004 election was honored when Newsweek won a National Magazine Award for the best single-topic issue.

From 1986 to 1996, Evan Thomas was Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief. From 1977-1986, he was a writer and editor at Time magazine. He has won numerous journalism awards, including a National Magazine Award in 1998 for his coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Since 1992, Thomas has been a regular weekly panelist on the syndicated public affairs talk show, Inside Washington. He has appeared on numerous television shows as a commentator, including: NBC’s Meet the Press and Today; CBS’s Face the Nation; ABC’s Nightline and Good Morning America; CNN’s Larry King Live; and PBS’s Charlie Rose and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He also appears regularly on the syndicated radio show, Imus in the Morning.

Evan Thomas is the author of five books, all published by Simon & Schuster: John Paul Jones (2003), a biography of the American revolutionary and a New York Times best seller; Robert Kennedy: His Life (2000); The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA (1995); The Man to See: The Life of Edward Bennett Williams (1991); and The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (with Walter Isaacson, 1986). His sixth and most recent book, Ships in the Night: Four Naval Commanders and the Last Sea War, was published by Simon & Schuster at the end of 2006.

A graduate of Harvard and the University of Virginia Law School, Evan Thomas was a visiting professor at Princeton from 2003 to 2004 and at Harvard from 2004 to 2005. He is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and a former trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. He lives with his wife and two children in Washington, DC.