Books in the Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University series

By examining the manufacturing, commercial, and cultural activities of the maverick industrialist Chen Diexian (1879-1940), Eugenia Lean illustrates how lettered men of early-twentieth-century China engaged in "vernacular industrialism," the pursuit of industry and science outside of conventional venues.

Beauty in the Age of Empire is a global history of aesthetic education focused on how Western practices were adopted, transformed, and repurposed in Egypt and Japan. Raja Adal uncovers the emergence of aesthetic education in modern schools and its role in making a broad spectrum of ideologies from fascism to humanism attractive.

Heroes and Toilers offers an unprecedented account of life and labor in postwar North Korea that looks at both governance and popular resistance. Cheehyung Harrison Kim traces the state's pursuit of progress through industrialism and examines how ordinary people challenged the state every step of the way.

The origins and evolution of technocratic fascism in wartime Japan.