Joel Andreas began following his parents to demonstrations against the Vietnam War while in elementary school in Detroit. He has been a political activist ever since, working to promote racial equality and workers' rights inside the United States and to stop US military intervention abroad. After working as an automobile assembler, a printer, and a civil engineering drafter, he completed a doctoral degree in sociology at the University of California in Los Angeles, studying the aftermath of the 1949 Chinese Revolution. He now teaches at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is the author of Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism and Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China's New Class.