The Essential World History

William J. Duiker is liberal arts Professor Emeritus of East Asian studies at The Pennsylvania State University and a former U.S. diplomat with service in Taiwan, South Vietnam and Washington, D.C. At Penn State, he served as director of International Programs in the College of Liberal Arts and as chairman of the East Asian Studies Committee. He has written extensively on the history of Vietnam and modern China, including the highly acclaimed COMMUNIST ROAD TO POWER IN VIETNAM (revised edition, Westview Press, 1996), which was selected for a Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award in 1982-1983 and 1996-1997. He is also the author of CHINA AND VIETNAM: THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT (Berkeley, 1987), U.S. CONTAINMENT POLICY AND THE CONFLICT IN INDOCHINA (Stanford, 1995), SACRED WAR: NATIONALISM AND REVOLUTION IN A DIVIDED VIETNAM (McGraw-Hill, 1995) and HO CHI MINH (Hyperion, 2000), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001. While Dr. Duiker's research specialization is in the field of nationalism and Asian revolutions, his intellectual interests are considerably more diverse. He has traveled widely and has taught courses on the history of communism and non-Western civilizations at Penn State, where he was awarded a Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 1996. The College of Liberal Arts honored him with an Emeritus Distinction Award in 2002. Dr. Duiker received his doctorate in Far Eastern history from Georgetown University.