Walter Scheidel is Dickason Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of fourteen books, including Rome and China and The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean.

Peter Fibiger Bang is Associate Professor of History at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen.
T. Corey Brennan is Associate Professor of Classics at Rutgers University - New Brunswick.
Peter Eich is Professor of Roman History and Historical Anthropology at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg.
Mark Edward Lewis is Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Chinese Culture at Stanford University.
Carlos Noreña is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.
Walter Scheidel is Dickason Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University.

"To close, this is a fascinating and persuasive depiction of two of the most important empires of the ancient world. In providing such a detailed analysis of both, this book allows not just for an implicit defence of comparative history but demands that we as scholars ask new questions about familiar topics and subjects. The different approaches to comparative history here, by scholars writing together, or leaning is important, but so too is the wider concern, that the language and practice of empire must be reclaimed by historians." -- Anthony Smart, York St John University, De novis libris iudicia