Nissan Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Princeton University
Sheldon Garon is the Nissan Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Princeton University. A specialist in modern Japanese history, he also writes transnational history that spotlights the flow of ideas and institutions among the U.S., Japan, and European and Asian countries. His new book, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves, examines what Americans might learn from European and East Asian nations whose public policies have vigorously encouraged citizens to save over the past two centuries. The book has received media attention from NPR, BBC, New York Times, The Guardian, Financial Times Deutschland, The Australian, and many other newspapers and magazines around the world. Previous publications include The State and Labor in Modern Japan, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life, and the co-edited volume, The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West. He is currently writing a transnational history of “home fronts” in Japan, Germany, Britain, and the United States in World War II.