Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Robert "Bobby" Kennedy was the seventh of nine children in the wealthy Kennedy family of Massachusetts. When his elder brother John F. Kennedy became President in 1961, Robert was named Attorney General. The brothers had worked together during the campaign, with Robert serving as his brother's campaign manager. Robert Kennedy had been educated at Harvard University, served in the Navy during World War II, and received his law degree from Virginia Law School in 1951. Then he worked in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice in 1951 and 1952, where he helped prosecute corruption and income-tax invasion cases. In the following years he served as congressional investigator for committees on Un-American Activities and on Improper Activities in Labor and Management. In 1961 Kennedy became Attorney General under President John F. Kennedy, and stayed on under President Lyndon B. Johnson. In that position he actively promoted civil rights by prosecuting people who violated the civil rights of minorities. He continued his pursuit of civil rights when he became Senator from New York in 1964. He also worked for antipoverty programs, medicare, and other social programs, and spoke out strongly against escalating involvement in Vietnam. Kennedy set out to campaign for the Democratic nomination for President in the 1968 election. He won five of the six primaries he entered and was becoming a formidable challenger, when Sirhan Sirhan, an Arab immigrant, shot him fatally on June 5, 1968.

Robert S. McNamara was born in San Francisco, California on June 9, 1916. He received a degree in economics and philosophy from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1937 and a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1939. He worked for one year at the accounting firm of Price, Waterhouse in San Francisco, and then in August 1940 returned to Harvard to teach in the business school. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Force. In 1946, he started working for the Ford Motor Company as manager of planning and financial analysis and on November 9, 1960, he became the first president of Ford Motor Company from outside the family of Henry Ford. He was the Secretary of Defense for both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations and served from 1961 to 1968. He served as the head of World Bank from 1968 to 1981. He died on July 6, 2009 at the age of 93.