Genevieve Foster (1893-1979) wrote and illustrated nineteen books of history and biography before her death on August 30, 1979. In 1922, she married Orrington Foster, and they had two children: a boy (named after his father but called Tony) and a girl, Joanna, four years later.

Ms. Foster was fascinated by the idea of looking at history "horizontally" and seeing how events and the lives of people interconnected. "History is drama," she once wrote, "with men and nations as the actors. Why not present it with all the players who belong together on the stage at once rather than only one character on the stage at a time?"

Though she had graduated from the University of Wisconsin and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago, she felt her knowledge of history was patchy and so as she often pointed out, "it was my own need to understand how things connected that led me to write my first book, George Washington's World."

This was enthusiastically received and was followed by Abraham Lincoln's World, and then four other "world" books: Augustus Caesar's World, The World of Columbus and Sons, The World of Captain John Smith, and The World of William Penn.