Volume 38, Number 17 · October 24, 1991
John King Fairbank (1907–1991)
By Roderick MacFarquhar
John Fairbank, who died on September 14 at the age of eighty-four, read virtually all serious Western works on China. Reviewing them, principally for The New York Review in the last several years, was for him one way of keeping abreast of China scholarship. He never got into the habit of recycling old paradigms, but was always thirsty for new facts and ideas. Young scholars were flattered by the keen attention he paid to their work, and his omnivorousness enabled him to produce for the general reader brilliant, up-to-date syntheses like The Great Chinese Revolution: 1800–1985 and China: A New History, which he completed just before his death.
Feature, 228 words
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