Writing history, the systematic effort to understand the human past, is a demanding intellectual endeavor. For historian Gordon H. Chang, it has also been a personal and moral enterprise intimately connected to his commitment to realizing a better world. This career-spanning anthology brings together significant essays that prompt conversations across his broad-ranging research interests and personal history, from trans-Pacific history and Asian American history to art history. The book’s introduction reflects on the author’s scholarly trajectory and his journey into Asian American studies as a field of study. Original headnotes that provide new context and insight accompany each of the fifteen essays. Across the chapters, interconnected themes of geopolitical conflict, racial thinking, identity, and transnationalism display the arc of the career of a pioneering scholar. These enduring essays, collected here for the first time, provide crucial historical perspective on urgent issues facing Asian Americans in a time of rising international tensions and anti-Asian sentiments at home.

Sponsored by the Research Institute of CCSRE.