Thomas Phillips is a composer, novelist, and teacher known for the minimalist aesthetic that informs his work. In addition to numerous music releases, installations, and collaborations in dance and theater, he is the author of novels, short story collections, and scholarly monographs, recent examples of which focus on horror and cultural theory. Having completed graduate work in Helsinki and Montreal, he currently teaches literature at North Carolina State University.

Cate Rivers is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at North Carolina State University, where she received her B.A. in English and minors in History and Japanese Studies. Her main areas of focus are the Southern United States and Japan. Her interests span trauma studies, nationalism, memory, gender and critical race theories, modernism, cultural representations of mental illness, mysticism, and Buddhist literature. Her ongoing research project frames 20th century Japanese novels and novels from the Southern Renaissance as social histories, with particular attention to war memory, family history, culpability, the construction of “family,” and the relation between national identity and self-conception.

S. Lee Funk is founder and lead consultant for Resources for Advancing Inquiry and Supporting Ethics (RAISE). With over thirty-five years as an educator in California, Dr. Funk brings wide-ranging experiences and extensive academic credentials to his analyses of the motives and psychological forces that shape the profile of a rampage murderer. For much of his career, Dr. Funk worked with young people with emotional disturbances, behavioral disorders, and anti-social inclinations. As the phenomenon of mass killings grew, he was able to combine perceptions based on daily interactions with his knowledge of cognitive theory and affective development to glean insights into the personal characteristics of perpetrators committing lethal acts that are not as random as many suppose. Dr. Funk received his doctorate from the University of San Francisco, where he was cited as “Doctoral Student of the Year” for a dissertation that combined scholarship with practical solutions for reducing student attrition. Dr. Funk has presented widely on issues related to classroom instruction, alternative schools, and behavior. While serving as a school superintendent, he was honored as “Administrator of the Year and as a “Star Administrator.” He remains an active member of the American Society for Criminology, the Council for Exceptional Children, the Foundation for Critical Thinking, and Phi Delta Kappa. Dr. Funk resides in Sacramento, California, with his wife of thirteen years. In his free time, he enjoys writing poetry, walking, traveling by train, and spending time with his family.

S. Lee Funk is founder and lead consultant for Resources for Advancing Inquiry and Supporting Ethics (RAISE). With over thirty-five years as an educator in California, Dr. Funk brings wide-ranging experiences and extensive academic credentials to his analyses of the motives and psychological forces that shape the profile of a rampage murderer. For much of his career, Dr. Funk worked with young people with emotional disturbances, behavioral disorders, and anti-social inclinations. As the phenomenon of mass killings grew, he was able to combine perceptions based on daily interactions with his knowledge of cognitive theory and affective development to glean insights into the personal characteristics of perpetrators committing lethal acts that are not as random as many suppose. Dr. Funk received his doctorate from the University of San Francisco, where he was cited as “Doctoral Student of the Year” for a dissertation that combined scholarship with practical solutions for reducing student attrition. Dr. Funk has presented widely on issues related to classroom instruction, alternative schools, and behavior. While serving as a school superintendent, he was honored as “Administrator of the Year and as a “Star Administrator.” He remains an active member of the American Society for Criminology, the Council for Exceptional Children, the Foundation for Critical Thinking, and Phi Delta Kappa. Dr. Funk resides in Sacramento, California, with his wife of thirteen years. In his free time, he enjoys writing poetry, walking, traveling by train, and spending time with his family.

Bradley Mason Gates is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. He holds a B.S. in education from Millersville University, in Pennsylvania, and a MPA in public administration from Golden Gate University, in California. During his career, Brad participated in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, and later commanded the Marine Corps artillery force in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1985, Brad received the General John A. Lejeune Award for Inspirational Leadership, and in 1987 he received the George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. In 1984, Brad attended the 40th Anniversary of survivors of the Saipan suicide attack of 1944, the subject of this book. He subsequently spent almost ten years conducting personal interviews and other research on the attack, including a trip to Saipan in 1992. Brad and his wife Kathy, also a graduate of Millersville University, met while they were students. They have three children and five grandchildren.

Stuart Walton is a cultural historian, novelist, and critic based in southwest England. He is the author of An Excursion through Chaos (2021), Introducing Theodor Adorno (2018), In The Realm of the Senses: A Materialist Theory of Seeing and Feeling (2016), A Natural History of Human Emotions (2004), and Out Of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication (2001; 2016), as well as a number of books on food and drink.

Seymour W. Itzkoff is Professor Emeritus of Education at Smith College. His professional career began as a cellist in the Hartford Symphony while studying at the University of Hartford. The Korean War found him playing as a cellist in the U.S. Army Piano Trio in Washington D.C for President Harry S Truman at the White House and for General George Marshall at the Pentagon. Itzkoff’s developing interest in philosophy led him to enroll in doctoral studies at Columbia University. During this period, he taught at several public schools in New York and at Hunter and Lehman Colleges of the City University of New York (CUNY). He then joined the faculty of Smith College, where he taught for 35 years. His publications include 32 books in various academic fields with a major interest in human evolution and intelligence.

Henrik Bering is a graduate of Oxford University (Pembroke College) and has been a Professional Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He is the author of Outpost Berlin: The American Forces in Berlin 1945-94 and Helmut Kohl: The Man Who Reunited Germany, Rebuilt Europe, and Thwarted the Soviet Empire. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Criterion, and Policy Review.

A scholar of Renaissance drama and Jungian psychology, James P. Driscoll, Ph.D., explores psychological approaches to the arts, religion, and public philosophy. He has written seven previous books: Identity in Shakespearean Drama, The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton, Shakespeare and Jung: The God in Time, Shakespeare’s Identities, How AIDS Activists Challenged America, Jung’s Cartography of the Psyche, and The Devil and Dr. Fauci. Driscoll has long applied his academic skills and original thinking to the LGBT, HIV, and patient rights causes. During the 1990s, he led the AIDS activist movement for FDA reform. Since then, he has distinguished himself with trenchant criticisms of oppressive bureaucracies and his work implementing critical reforms.

Nick Buckley MBE is the founder of The Mancunian Way, a charity that fired him in 2020 after he published an article critical of Black Lives Matter. Following a public outcry, however, Mancunian Way’s board of trustees resigned and Nick Buckley was reinstated.

Dr. Jeton McClinton teaches at the University of the Virgin Islands.