This volume is a historical inquiry into the foundational, deceptively simple question - What does it mean to be a human person? Viewing the human person from various perspectives - law, education, business, media, religion, medicine, community life, gender, art - sixteen historians of American life explore how our understanding of personhood has changed over time and how that changing understanding has significantly affected our ideas about morality and human rights, our conversations about public policy, and American culture as a whole.