Jost Hermand was born in Kassel, Germany, in 1930. The William F. Vilas Research Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin, he has also taught at Harvard University, the University of Texas, University of Berlin, and six other German universities. He has written or edited twelve books.
Margot Bettauer Dembo, an editor with the American Museum of Natural History, is the translator of Armin and Renate Schmid's Lost in a Labyrinth of Red Tape, also published by Northwestern University Press.