About the Author

Vincent Virga is a writer and picture editor. He is the coauthor, with the Library of Congress, of Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations (Little, Brown, 2007), The American Civil War: 365 Days (Abrams, 2006), and Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States with Alan Brinkley (Knopf, 1997), which was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club. He's a native New Yorker who also lives in Washington, D.C.