STEPHEN R. PLATT is an award-winning historian of China and the West whose newest book is THE RAIDER, a biography of the legendary, enigmatic World War II Marine officer Evans Carlson. His previous books include Imperial Twilight (Knopf, 2018) and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (Knopf, 2012), the latter of which won the Cundill History Prize. Platt is also the recipient of the Smart Family Foundation nonfiction prize and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award and the Baillie Gifford Prize. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and holds a PhD in Chinese History from Yale, where his dissertation won the Theron Rockwell Field Prize. Aside from his books, he has also written for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Times Literary Supplement. He lives with his family in Northampton, Massachusetts.