Michael Shapiro, Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Semiotic Studies at Brown University, was born in Yokohama, spent World War II in Japan, and grew up speaking Russian, Japanese, and English. He earned degrees in Slavic Languages and Literatures at UCLA (A. B., ‘61) and Harvard (A. M., ‘62; Ph. D. ‘65). Besides Brown and Columbia, he has taught at UCLA, Princeton, UC Berkeley, and Green Mountain College, and has given over one hundred public lectures to academic audiences all over the world.