Historian Eric Foner is particularly admired for his writing on reconstruction. His most recent book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, won pretty much every prize going including the Pulitzer and a—can this be right?—Cy Young Award. Probably a typo. He is our only guest to have written for robots, revising the scripts for Robot Abe Lincoln at Disneyworld and Disneyland.

• PERSON: W.E.B. Du Bois
• PLACE: New York’s Metropolitan Opera House
• THING: Dress sword given him by West Point Corps of cadets