Martin A. Lee is the author of four books, including most recently "Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana" "Medical, Recreational and Scientific". He is the cofounder of the media watch group FAIR and the director of Project CBD, a medical science information service. He is also the author of "Acid Dreams" and "The Beast Reawakens", and his writing has appeared in many publications, including "The Washington Post", "The Los Angeles Times", "Harper s Magazine", "Le Monde Diplomatique", "Rolling Stone", "The Nation", Salon.com, HuffingtonPost.com, and TheDailyBeast.com.
Edwin O. Reischauer was born in Japan in 1910, the son of Protestant educational-missionary parents, founders of Japan's first school for the deaf. After being educated in Japanese and American schools, he received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1931 and his M.A. from Harvard in 1932. Four years later he received a Ph.D. in Far Eastern Languages from Harvard. In 1938 he joined the faculty at Harvard, where he rose to the position of professor and acted for an extensive period as director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. His academic career was interrupted by World War II, during which he served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, and he held civilian posts first in the War… Department and later in the Department of State. In 1961 he again took leave from Harvard to accept a position for which he had been hand-picked by President John F. Kennedy---ambassador to Japan. The Japanese accepted him as one of their own; one editorial writer welcomed him by writing that he was well informed about Japan, "having no equal among foreigners on that point." Another remarked how satisfying it would be to "write an editorial and know that the American Ambassador will actually be able to read it." Reischauer was a prolific writer and an energetic speaker who saw his role as introducing Japan to America. In his writings and in his activities in other media such as film, he was committed to reaching as broad an audience as possible. At Harvard he led in training the first generation of true American scholars of Japan. As U.S. ambassador to Japan, however, his role became reversed as he sought to educate Japanese about America and Americans. In the wake of the war in the Pacific, Reischauer hoped to show Americans and Japanese that the two countries could and should be close allies and friends. His assessment of Japan's history emphasized the nonrevolutionary character of its modern history and its outward-looking development. In his view Japanese war and aggression were aberrations in a long emerging liberal tradition. His positivist interpretation has been a leading influence in defining America's postwar vision of Japan.Norman Solomon is the author of twelve books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and, with Reese Erlich, Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You. Solomon is a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and many other newspapers.A frequent guest on television and radio, he was featured in Bill Moyers' recent PBS documentary Buying the War and a full-length film adaptation of War Made Easy produced by the Media Education Foundation.Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is a recipient of the George Orwell Award, which honors distinguished contributions to honesty and clarity in public language.madelovegotwar.com