[1] Gordon completed his PhD in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University in 1981.
Gordon's 2003 A Modern History of Japan is now one of the standard textbooks on the topic and has been translated into Japanese.
Gordon has more recently been engaged in research on the history of the sewing machine and the making of the modern consumer in 20th century Japan.
In October 2020, the National Institutes for the Humanities of Japan (NIHU) awarded Gordon the 2020 International Prize for Japanese Studies.
[2] In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Andrew Gordon, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 30 works in 90+ publications in five languages and 6,000+ library holdings.