Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was born into slavery on a plantation in Tuckahoe, Maryland, but escaped in 1838 by posing as a free sailor and travelled to New York. He became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, where he began to give lectures on behalf of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In 1845 he published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, as a memoir and treatise on abolition.

Tom Butler-Bowden was working as a political adviser in Australia when, at 25, he read Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Captivated by it and other books in the personal development field, he left his career to write the bestselling 50 Self-Help Classics, the first guide to the personal development literature and a winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award. Tom has also provided critical introductions to self-development and prosperity classics through the Capstone Classics series published by Wiley.