Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1961, he published "Catch-22", which became a bestseller and, in 1970, a film. He went on to write such novels as "Something Happened", "God Knows", "Picture This", "Closing Time" (the sequel to Catch-22), and "Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man". Heller died in December 1999.

Christopher Buckley is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor and memoirist. His books have been translated into sixteen foreign languages. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter. He has written for many newspapers and magazines and has lectured in over seventy cities around the world. He was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.