Just as my son’s first grade class was embarking on a unit on Japan a couple weeks ago, what should arrive at our front door but a package from Tokyo containing the handsome new Japanese edition of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.
Publishers Iwanami Shoten took particular care in creating their edition, which appears in two hardcover volumes, even asking if I could write an updated, Trump Age introduction for the Japanese audience, which I was delighted to do. Co-translator Yoshio Higomoto and was a pleasure to work with. The book looks to have been published in mid-October, though I missed that at the time.
Funny enough, the only other foreign language edition of American Nations is Geulhangari Publishers’ Korean edition, and a simplified Chinese edition is coming soon. Northeast Asia leads the way….
[Update, 1/26/18: Japan’s Asahi Shimbun came to my home to interview me for a feature on the book which appeared this week.]
(Here, for search purposes, is the Japanese title:)
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.