Kenneth Landon

Kenneth Perry Landon (27 March 1903 – 26 August 1993) was an American missionary to Thailand who became a foreign policy expert on Southeast Asia. He was the husband of Margaret Landon, who was best known for writing Anna and the King of Siam. Landon was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He studied at Wheaton College and served as a Presbyterian missionary in Thailand from 1927 to 1937. He then returned to the United States and obtained a PhD from the University of Chicago. Landon taught at Earlham College and wrote Siam in Transition: A Brief Survey of Cultural Trends in the Five Years Since the Revolution of 1932 (1939). He worked for the Office of Strategic Services in World War II. After the war, Landon served as associate dean of the School of Language and Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute and was on the Operations Coordinating Board of the National Security Council. He then served as director of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at American University until his retirement in 1974. He died of cancer in 1993.

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