Authors Norie Huddle and Michael Reich write in their new preface in 2025: "As we republish Island of Dreams in this Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, we invite readers to remember Japan's environmental crises of the past and reflect on the global implications of these stories. We hope that making Island of Dreams available again will offer readers valuable insights to help us come together and protect our global environment into the future."
Born in Virginia in 1944, graduated from Brown University in Russian language (1966) and spent two years in Colombia, S.A. with the Peace Corps. Back in America, she studied Chinese and environmental sciences and, in 1971, was given a scholarship to attend a conference in Japan after which she hoped to visit China. But shocked by Japan’s deteriorated environment, she stayed to study the problem and write Island of Dreams with Michael Reich. A Visiting Scholar with Hitotsubashi University’s President Shigeto Tsuru’s research center (1973-5), Norie returned to America (1975) to organize “Project America 1976,” celebrating America’s Bicentennial by bicycling 9 months across America. Her book about this became a bestseller in Japan.
In 1979, Norie founded the Center for New National Security to study national and global security issues, broadly defined. During the 1980s, while participating in numerous US-USSR citizen diplomacy initiatives, she wrote Surviving: The Best Game on Earth, a NYTimes bestseller redefining national security. In the 1990s, Norie wrote three more bestsellers and built her house (hands-on) in West Virginia. In 2007, she and her husband, Richard Wheeler, began transforming a semi-abandoned 350-acre farm in Ecuador into the Garden of Paradise. In 2011, they won the first successful Rights of Nature lawsuit in Ecuador and in the world. Today the Garden of Paradise has visitors from all over the world. Norie continues to write, consult, coach and do public speaking. (For more information, see https://noriehuddle.earth).
born in Ohio in 1950, entered Yale University in September 1968 and, after three years of courses, travelled to Japan in 1971 under the Yale Five-Year B.A. Program. In Japan, Michael first worked as a medical technician at the Heart Institute of Japan (Tokyo Women’s Medical University) and then moved to Keio University’s International Medical Information Center as visiting researcher. In October 1973, he was appointed as research assistant at the Princeton University Center for Environmental Studies. While in Japan for three years, he wrote Island of Dreams with Norie Huddle. He then returned to the U.S.A. in the summer of 1974. Michael graduated with a B.A. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry in 1974, then received his M.A. in East Asian Studies in 1975 and PhD. in political science in 1981, all from Yale.
Michael joined the faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1983 and helped establish the Takemi Program in International Health, serving as director from 1988 to 2023. Among his many publications, he is coauthor of Six Lives/Six Deaths: Portraits from Modern Japan (Yale, 1979), author of Toxic Politics: Responding to Chemical Disasters (Cornell, 1991), and coauthor of Getting Health Reform Right: A Guide to Improving Performance and Equity (Oxford, 2004). He is founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Health Systems & Reform since 2015, and is currently the Taro Takemi Professor of International Health Policy, Emeritus at Harvard. (For more information, see https://michaelrreich.com)