Black and white photograph of Polish-born English writer Joseph Conrad.

Joseph Conrad

(1857 - 1924)

Italian artist, engineer, and scientist Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci

(1452 - 1519)

Color photograph of American writer Annie Dillard.

Annie Dillard

Frederick Turner

Black and white photograph of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud with cigar.

Sigmund Freud

(1856 - 1949)

Novelist and psychiatrist Daniel Mason.

Daniel Mason

Portrait of Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(1712 - 1778)

Photograph of American biologist Edward O. Wilson.

Edward O. Wilson

Black and white image of American writer Herman Melville.

Herman Melville

(1819 - 1891)

French man of letters Denis Diderot.

Denis Diderot

(1713 - 1784)

Portrait bust of presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer.

Homer

(c. 800 BC - 725 BC)

Portrait of Francis Bacon in sixteenth-century armor.

Francis Bacon

(1561 - 1626)

Black and white photograph of Emily Dickinson sitting next to a desk.

Emily Dickinson

(1830 - 1886)

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Lewis H. Lapham

(1935 - 2024)

English poet Edmund Spenser.

Edmund Spenser

(1552 - 1599)

American diplomat, scholar, and conservationist George Perkins Marsh.

George Perkins Marsh

(1801 - 1882)

Black and white photograph of a young H.G. Wells with a mustache.

H.G. Wells

(1866 - 1946)

Painted portrait of English poet John Milton.

John Milton

(1608 - 1674)

Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

William Shakespeare

(1564 - 1616)

Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

(1463 - 1494)

William Blake

(1757 - 1827)

American author Evan S. Connell.

Evan S. Connell

(1924 - 2013)

American poet, journalist, and essayist Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman

(1819 - 1892)

Engraving of Pliny the Elder.

Pliny the Elder

(23 - 79)

Painted portrait of German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

Alexander von Humboldt

(1769 - 1859)

Al Gore

Theocritus

(c. 300 BC - c. 260 BC)

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

(1817 - 1862)

Chris Rose

Alain de Lille

(c. 1128 - 1202)

At the age of seventeen, Hawthorne mused to his mother about the possibility of “relying for support upon my pen.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

(1804 - 1864)

Jules Verne

Jules Verne

(1828 - 1905)

Frederick Jackson Turner

(1861 - 1932)

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

Pliny the Younger

(61 - 112)

Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

(106 BC - 43 BC)

Photograph of Native American author and educator Luther Standing Bear.

Luther Standing Bear

(1868 - 1939)

American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Frederick Law Olmsted

(1822 - 1903)

Photograph of American environmentalist Aldo Leopold.

Aldo Leopold

(1887 - 1948)

Portrait bust of Roman poet Virgil.

Virgil

(70 BC - 19 BC)

Black and white photograph of Irish poet and writer W. B. Yeats.

W.B. Yeats

(1865 - 1939)

Black and white photograph of former chancellor and Führer of Germany Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler

(1889 - 1945)

Oil painting portrair Michel de Montaigne in red robes and white collar

Michel de Montaigne

(1533 - 1592)

Jamaica Kincaid

German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749 - 1832)

Vitruvius

(c. 80 BC - 15 BC)

Immanuel Kant

(1724 - 1804)

Edward Hoagland

Color photograph of writer and editor Garret Keizer.

Garret Keizer

Photograph of journalist, author, and professor Michael Pollan.

Michael Pollan

Black and white photograph of American novelist John Steinbeck.

John Steinbeck

(1902 - 1968)

British author Mary Shelley.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

(1797 - 1851)

French-American author J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur.

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

(1735 - 1813)

Painted portrait of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon

(1707 - 1788)

Smiling man with thin hair sticking out at a podium

James D. Watson

British author Aldous Huxley.

Aldous Huxley

(1894 - 1963)

Man with a gray goatee wearing a checked shirt standing outdoors

Eric Schlosser

Andrew Jackson

(1767 - 1845)

Image of Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Bashō.

Matsuo Basho

(1644 - 1694)

Image of English naturalist Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin

(1809 - 1882)

Image of medieval traveler Sir John Mandeville.

John Mandeville

(c. 1300 - 1371)

Sculpture bust of Greek historian Herodotus.

Herodotus

(c. 484 BC - c. 425 BC)

Photograph of American poet Countee Cullen.

Countee Cullen

(1903 - 1946)

Photograph of American writer and naturalist Henry Beston.

Henry Beston

(1888 - 1968)

Wang Wei

(701 - 761)

Jane Jacobs

(1916 - 2006)

Pretty-shield

(1856 - 1944)

Photograph of American novelist Jack London.

Jack London

(1876 - 1916)

Novalis

(1772 - 1801)

Depiction of Plymouth colony governor William Bradford.

William Bradford

(1590 - 1657)

Bill McKibben

Steven Stoll

Ovid

(43 BC - c. 17)

Loren Eiseley

(1907 - 1977)

English poet and satirist Alexander Pope.

Alexander Pope

(1688 - 1744)

Carl Sagan

(1934 - 1996)

Painting of Greek philosopher Heraclitus weeping over a globe.

Heraclitus

(c. 540 BC - c. 480 BC)

John Muir

(1838 - 1914)

Black and white photograph of E. B. White sitting at his typewriter with his dachshund.

E.B. White

(1899 - 1985)

Photograph of British writer and journalist Simon Winchester.

Simon Winchester

Photograph of English art critic, novelist, and painter John Berger.

John Berger

(1926 - 2017)

Portrait of third president of the United States Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson

(1743 - 1826)

Lewis Thomas

(1913 - 1993)

David Quammen

Photograph of Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson

(1907 - 1964)

D. Graham Burnett

Paracelsus

(1493 - 1541)

Nicholas Barbon

(c. 1640 - 1698)

Portrait of English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton

(1643 - 1727)

English economist and demographer Thomas Malthus.

Thomas Malthus

(1766 - 1834)

Robinson Jeffers

(1887 - 1962)

Paul Gauguin

(1848 - 1903)

Black and white photograph of American writer and exponent of Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803 - 1882)

Black and white photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche with a huge mustache.

Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844 - 1900)

Painting of William Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth

(1770 - 1850)

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.

Hernán Cortés

(1485 - 1547)

Curtis White

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

(1667 - 1745)

Edward Abbey

(1927 - 1989)

Painting of a bearded man with dark eyes wearing a white ruff

John Winthrop

(1588 - 1649)

Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

Dante Alighieri

(1265 - 1321)

John D. Rockefeller Jr.

(1874 - 1960)

Engraving of a bust of Lucretius.

Lucretius

(c. 95 BC - c. 50 BC)

American poet Anne Bradstreet.

Anne Bradstreet

(c. 1612 - 1672)

Black and white photograph of former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt

(1858 - 1919)

American physicist Richard Feynman.

Richard Feynman

(1918 - 1988)

Charles Bowden

(1945 - 2014)