McLane, Charles (1920? - 2008)

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Charles Bancroft McLane was a retired Dartmouth College professor and author who lived in Hanover.

He was born in Concord, NH and was educated at St. Paul's School in Concord and Dartmouth College. He received his doctorate in public law and government from Columbia University in 1955. After beginning his academic career at Bard College and Swarthmore College, he joined the Dartmouth College faculty in 1957 as a professor of Russian civilization, and later became chairman of the Government Department.

He taught overseas at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, West Africa, and at the London School of Economics. He retired from teaching in the late 1980s.

As a young man, McLane skied competitively and was a former captain of the Dartmouth College ski team. During World War II, he volunteered for the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division Ski Troops, serving from 1941 to 1944. For the next two years, he served with the Army's Psychological Warfare Division as an intelligence officer in Europe, reaching the rank of captain.

For a time in the 1950's, McLane was a cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

McLane authored several scholarly publications on Soviet relations. He and his wife co-authored a multi-volume history of the islands of the Maine coast. He also wrote one novel, Red Right Returning, a tale of Maine island life set in the 1930s and 1940s.

Bibliography

  • Soviet Policy and the Chinese Communists, 1931-1946 (1958)
  • Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia; an Exploration of Eastern Policy under Lenin and Stalin (1966)
  • Soviet-Middle East Relations (1973)
  • Soviet-Asian Relations (1973)
  • Soviet-African Relations (1974)
  • Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast (1982-1994)
  • Red Right Returning : a Novel (2004)