Herbert P. Bix, historian and teacher, was born in Boston and grew up in the nearby suburb of Winthrop. After attending the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve and served a tour of duty aboard ships stationed in Japan. He attended Harvard University during the height of the Vietnam War. He has written extensively, in leading journals and newspapers in the U.S. and Japan, on modern and contemporary Japanese history, in ways that have challenged long-established assumptions. His Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590-1884 (Yale University Press, 1992) was widely acclaimed in academic journals as one of the best books ever written on the subject of peasant rebellion in a premodern society. His Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (HarperCollins 2000-1) won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He teaches at Binghamton University, New York, and writes on issues of war and empire.
