"The Growth Idea represents a significant contribution to the emerging field of postwar Japanese history and an important step forward in the historicization of Japan's high-speed growth of the 1950s and 1960s. It is the first and fullest treatment of the ideology of postwar growthism, of Keynesian thought in Japan, and of the development of postwar statistical practice. Well written, original, and based on first-rate scholarship, The Growth Idea approaches its subject in a fresh way that will interest specialists in Japanese history as well as others interested in Japan from a comparative perspective."---Mark Metzler, University of Texas<BR><BR>"Tom Havens' indispensable new book provides a magisterial guide to the postwar Japanese avant-garde in the nonverbal arts. His dozens of interviews preserve the views of the artists, capturing the way they spoke and thought about themselves and their art. At the same time, Havens is a critical listener and reliable guide, parsing the self-serving from the perceptive in what his subjects have to say."---David Goodman, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign