Joy Hakim is the celebrated author of the 10-book A History of US series. In this series of books she humanizes the characters throughout the history of the United States by giving little know facts about them, such as; Thomas Jefferson owned America's first pasta machine and Mary Todd Lincoln's Inaugural ball gown cost two thousand dollars. These types of details bring to life the character being read about, they are not just obscure people from our nations past.

Hakim grew up in a small Vermont community, where her father owned a furniture shop and her mother was a buyer for a department store. Although Hakim was a bright child, she admits that if the subject did not hold her interest she did not try very hard, which was the case with her history classes. She said, "The history books were dreadful. Most are written by a committee...