Frederic Wakeman was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1937. He attained an AB in European History and Literature from Harvard College in 1959, and, afterwards multiple master’s degrees, from the Institut d’etudes politiques, Paris, University of California, Berkeley, and Cambridge University in various subjects ranging from Soviet Studies to Far Eastern History. He was awarded a PhD in East Asian History and Oriental Languages from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965.

Wakeman held various teaching positions at the University of California, Berkeley, throughout the years. Notable fellowships: Harvard National Scholar (1955-1959); Junior Fellow, Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley (1960-1962); National Defense Foreign Language Fellow (1962-1963); John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (1973-1974), Special Chairman’s Fellow and National Endowment for the Humanities (1981). His books include Seventeen Royal Palms Drive (1962), Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861 (1966), Nothing Concealed: Essays in Honor of Liu Yu-yun (1970), History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives of the thought of Mao Tse-tung (1973), Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (1975). His most recent book, Dai Li of the Chinese Secret Service (2003), incisively gazes into Chiang Kai-shek’s China of the 1940s and particularly into the daily workings of the then largest spy and counterespionage organization in the world.