Publications
BORN A FOREIGNER
A Memoir of the American Presence in Asia
by Charles T. Cross
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999)
281 pp, 24 illustrations, notes, index
cloth $69 (members' price $30)
softcover $24.95 (members' price $20)
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from Thomas L. Hughes, President Emeritus, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "This is a remarkable and highly personal account of a half century of Chinese-American engagement -- a mosaic of affection and insight, friendship and hostility, cross-purposes and adjustment, public posturing and private pain. . . . Cross gives us memorable glimpses of politicians, diplomats, generals, and bureaucrats in their often fateful mismatches with one another and with history. |
Chuck Cross spent much of his youth and adult life in China and elsewhere in East Asia, garnering insights and skills he later applied to U.S. diplomacy in the region. His book -- part perceptive memoir, part provocative diplomatic history -- traces the intense, sometimes violent American connection with East Asia as the author observed and experienced it. He was a boy in Beijing, a teenager under the Japanese Occupation of North China, a decorated Marine in World War II combat in the Pacific, and a distinguished Foreign Service officer.
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from Arnold R. Isaacs, author of
Vietnam Shadows:
". . . no one who reads [Born a Foreigner] will fail to sense Cross's own solid values or his sympathy and respect for the ordinary Chinese and other Asians whom he lived among during the turbulent and often tragic events recounted in this book." |
Cross's 32-year diplomatic career was heavy on East Asia and China-watching -- in Indonesia in the first years of independence, Malaysia during the Communist insurgency, London during secret Vietnam negotiations, Vietnam as chief of pacification operations in I Corps 1967-69, Singapore as ambassador 1969-72, Hong Kong as consul general 1974-77, and Taiwan as the first director of the American Institute and unofficial U.S. representative, 1977-81. He also served in Egypt, Cyprus, and Washington.
Other Reader's Review
- Arthur Hummel, Ambassador to China 1981-1985
This is a most unusual and informative book that combines gripping and intensely personal reminiscences with authoritative diplomatic and foreign policy history. It is must reading for its close-up views on our China policies; intimate descriptions of a privileged existence in Peking before World War II; candid glimpses of life in the Foreign Service; authoritative diplomatic history about the author's part in policymaking in several areas of the world; and an especially moving and detailed picture of his work in shoring up American and Vietnamese efforts to prevent a communist takeover. No other work I have seen amalgamates the personal and the official in such a satisfying way."
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