Michael Barry, born in New York City in 1948, raised in France, now lectures at Princeton University, his alma mater, on the traditional and modern cultures of Iran and especially Afghanistan. Barry is widely published and holds six literary prizes. Stuart Cary Welch, former curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art at Harvard University's Fogg and Sackler Museums, is widely recognized as one of the world's foremost specialists of Persian and Mughal painting.