BREAKING THE RULES
The Intimate Diary of Ross Terrill
Edited by Philip Gambone
Rattling Good Yarns Press. 530 pages, $29.95
BORN IN AUSTRALIA in 1938, Ross Terrill came to the United States to earn a doctorate at Harvard. He stayed on there as a junior faculty member in the 1970s (where our paths briefly crossed, although we did not know each other) and became a pioneering scholar on China just as it was becoming a major power and the U.S. was establishing diplomatic and economic relations. After his junior appointment at Harvard ended, he became a much-sought-after freelance author and commentator, publishing book after well-received book, as well as important scholarly articles. He became an American citizen but retained a pinch of British colonial class-consciousness.
Now in his mid-eighties, Terrill has published the diary he kept between 1963 and 1989, edited by Philip Gambone. Surprisingly sexually explicit for its era, this is the first in a planned two-volume set.
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H. N. Hirsch, emeritus professor of politics at Oberlin, is the author of the memoir Office Hours and the Bob and Marcus mystery series.
