Walt Whitman, 19th-century American poet, essayist, and journalist.

Bill Nye (1955-), American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist, and former mechanical engineer, best known as the host of the Disney/PBS children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–98) and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media.

C.S. Lewis, 20th-century British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist. He is best known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia, and his nonfiction apologetics, such as Mere Christianity.

apologetics: (n) branch of theology that deals with the defense and proof of Christianity.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, composer, and Latin and Greek scholar. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor and irony.

metaphor: (n) figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to an object it may designate only by implicit comparison or analogy, as in the phrase "the evening of life."

irony: (n) the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning; incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon."

Gene Simmons (1949-), Israeli-American rock bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, actor, and television personality. Known by his stage persona The Demon, he is the bass guitarist/co-lead vocalist of Kiss, a rock band which more than 100 million albums worldwide.

narcissist: (n) one with an excessive admiration or love of oneself.

George Timothy Clooney (1961-), American actor, writer, producer, director and activist. He has received three Golden Globe Awards for his work as an actor and two Academy Awards, one for acting and the other for producing.

Samuel Butler, Victorian-era English author. Two of his most famous works are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh. He is also known for studies on Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, which remain in use.

William Hazlitt (1778–1830), English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, as the greatest art critic of his age, and as a drama critic, social commentator, and philosopher. He was also a painter. He is considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language.

Peter Drucker, 20th-century Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation. A leader in the development of management education, he invented the concept known as management by objectives
and has been described as "the founder of modern management."

Shannon L. Adler