Jonathan Dermot Spence is an English-born American historian, sinologist, and writer specialising in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. His most widely read book is The Search for Modern China, a survey of the last several hundred years of Chinese history based on his popular course at Yale. A prolific author, reviewer, and essayist, he has published more than a dozen books on China. He retired from Yale in 2008. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Spence