Greg Leck: Dancing on the Rim of a Volcano

Shanghai, in the era between the wars, was a cosmopolitan city of legendary status.  Greeted by the city's billion dollar skyline, thousands of Westerners arrived, stepping ashore at the landing on the fabled Bund.  Many came seeking fortune; others sought not profit but opportunity, excitement, romance, adventure, or souls.  Among the expatriate taipans, administrators, civil servants, and missionaries, were also workaday people who sought better opportunities for themselves and their families.  Beachcombers, itinerant entertainers, adventurers, soldiers, and spies also called at Shanghai.  Many in these eclectic groups were Americans. Included were a tough talking, two-fisted newspaper correspondent and radio announcer, a small time swindler and blackmailer with a Social Register background, a church mission secretary who became enamored with Shanghai's nightlife, a commercial representative who was an undercover operative for the US Office of Naval Intelligence, and an American Nisei who, renouncing his American citizenship, threw his lot in with the Japanese.  Some of the city's infamous criminals, cabaret owners, and soldiers of fortune were also Americans.  After Pearl Harbor, each followed his own path and faced the consequences until August, 1945, when a small band of Americans landed in the city, the first wave in a surge of US military whose presence would briefly put its own stamp on the frenetic, opportunistic, capitalistic city which was Shanghai.

GREG LECK: Born in New Jersey, Dr. Greg Leck grew up hearing stories of his Shanghailander mother's life in the Treaty Port, Japanese Occupation, Republican, and Mao eras of the city.  After obtaining his undergraduate degree from Tufts University, he earned his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery at Cornell University. While there, he began his first forays into China historical research at the Kroch Asia library collections.  A passionate researcher, he has pursued this avocational interest in archives all over the world.  His first book, Captives of Empire, looked at the subject of Allied civilian internment in   China.   Critically acclaimed, it was the first work to cover the matter in a comprehensive and detailed manner.  His second book, Dancing on the Rim of a Volcano: Americans in Shanghai, 1941-1945, is in the research stage.  It follows the lives of a group of disparate Americans, against the turbulent backdrop of Shanghai's cabarets, high-life, rackets, refugees, espionage, and war.

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