Author Description

About the Author Albert M. Craig is the Harvard-Yenching Research Professor of History Emeritus at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1959. A graduate of Northwestern University, he received his Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has studied at Strasbourg University and at Kyoto, Keio, and Tokyo universities in Japan. He is the author of "Choshu in the Meiji Restoration" (1961), "The Heritage of Chinese Civilization" (2001), and, with others, of "East Asia,"" Tradition and Transformation" (1989). He is the editor of "Japan,"" A Comparative View" (1973) and co-editor of "Personality in Japanese History" (1970). At present he is engaged in research on the thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi. For eleven years (1976-1987) he was the director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. He has also been a visiting professor at Kyoto and Tokyo universities. He has received Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Japan Foundation Fellowships. In 1988 he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government. William A. Graham is Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and O'Brien Professor of Divinity and Dean in the Faculty of Divinity at Harvard University, where he has taught for thirty-four years. He has directed the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and chaired the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on the Study of Religion, and the Core Curriculum Committee on Foreign Cultures. He received his BA in Comparative Literature from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, an A.M. and Ph.D. in History of Religion from Harvard, and studied also in Gottingen, Tubingen, Lebanon, and London. He is former chair of the Council on Graduate Studies inReligion (U.S. and Canada). In 2000 he received the quinquennial Award for Excellence in Research in Islamic History and Culture from the Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. He has held John Simon Guggenheim and Alexander von Humboldt research fellowships and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his publications are "Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion" (1987); "Divine Word and Prophetic World in Early Islam" (1977-ACLS History of Religions Prize, 1978); and "Three Faiths, One God" (co-authored, 2003). Donald Kagan is Sterling Professor of History and Classics at Yale University, where he has taught since 1969. He received the A.B. degree in history from Brooklyn College, the M.A. in classics from Brown University, and the Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University. During 1958-1959 he studied at the American School of Classical Studies as a Fulbright Scholar. He has received three awards for undergraduate teaching at Cornell and Yale. He is the author of a history of Greek political thought, "The Great Dialogue" (1965); a four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War, "The Origins of the Peloponnesian War "(1969); "The Archidamian War "(1974); "The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition" (1981); "The Fall of the Athenian Empire "(1987); a biography of Pericles, "Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy" (1991); "On the Origins of War "(1995), and "The Peloponnesian War" (2003). He is coauthor, with Frederick W. Kagan of "While America Sleeps" (2000). With Brian Tierney and L. Pearce Williams, he is the editor of "Great Issues in WesternCivilization," a collection of readings. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal for 2002. Steven Ozment is McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University. He has taught Western Civilization at Yale, Stanford, and Harvard. He is the author of nine books, "The Age of Reform, 1250-1550" (1980), won the Schaff Prize, and was nominated for the 1981 National Book Award. Five of his books have been selections of the History Book Club: "Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in Sixteenth Century Europe" (198