Ezra Feivel Vogel (born July 11, 1930) is an American author who has written several books on Japan and Asia.
He was born to a Jewish family in 1930 in Delaware, Ohio. He studied at Ohio Wesleyan University and Harvard University and received his Ph.D. in 1958. While attending Ohio Wesleyan, Vogel was a member of the Beta Sigma Tau fraternity (that later merged with the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity).
Two years of on the spot research in Japan led to his first book, an innovative study of a Japanese neighborhood, Japan's New Middle Class After teaching briefly at Yale, he returned to Harvard to study Chinese language and begin research on contemporary China. His 1969 monograph Canton Under Communism combined interviews with Chinese who had left China with extensive readings in documents to make a closely detailed narrative and analysis. He taught at Harvard starting in 1964, becoming a professor in 1967, retiring in the year 2000.
Over a productive career, he published dozens of articles, reviews, and conference papers, major books on China, Japan, and American-East Asian Relations, and organized scholarly and policy conferences on many topics. As head of the undergraduate East Asian Studies concentration (major), he supported many students in their initial studies, and as a graduate supervisory he nurtured the careers of dozens of PhDs. From 1993 to 1995, Vogel took a two year leave from teaching and served as U.S. National Intelligence Officer for East Asia. His book Japan as Number One is the all-time bestseller held by Western authors in Japan.
Currently, Vogel is researching Deng Xiaoping and his contributions to China's contemporary reform.
Norman W. Bell and Ezra F. Vogel, eds., A Modern Introduction to the Family. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1960.
Japan's New Middle Class; the Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (Berkeley,: University of California Press, 1963).
Ezra F. Vogel, ed. Modern Japanese Organization and Decision-Making. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. ISBN 0520028570. 0520030389. $
Ezra F. Vogel. Japan as Number One : Lessons for America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. ISBN 0674472152.
Ezra F. Vogel. Comeback, Case by Case : Building the Resurgence of American Business. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. ISBN 067146079X.
Ezra F. Vogel. One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong under Reform. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. ISBN 0674639103
Deborah Davis and Ezra F. Vogel, eds., Chinese Society on the Eve of Tiananmen : The Impact of Reform. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies Distributed by Harvard University Press, Harvard Contemporary China Series 7, 1990. ISBN 0674125355.
Ezra F. Vogel. The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991. ISBN 0674315251
Ezra F. Vogel. ed. Living with China : U.S./China Relations in the Twenty-First Century. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. ISBN 0393045404
Ezra F. Vogel, Ming Yuan and Akihiko Tanaka, eds. The Golden Age of the U.S.-China-Japan Triangle, 1972-1989. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center : Distributed by Harvard University Press, Harvard East Asian Monographs 216, 2002.ISBN 0674009606
Stephen R. Mackinnon, Diana Lary and Ezra F. Vogel, eds.. China at War : Regions of China, 1937-1945. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2007. ISBN 9780804755092