Jay Taylor (December 4, 1931 – March 3, 2022[1]) was a former U.S. foreign service officer, academic, documentarian, and writer.
He was best known for writing The Generalissimo, a biography of Chiang Kai-Shek which won the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best English non-fiction book on Foreign Policy in 2010.
[5] Besides his work in the U.S. Foreign Service, he worked as a teacher at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. and Taichung, Taiwan, as Diplomat-in-Residence at the Carter Presidential Center, and as a research associate at Harvard's Fairbanks Center for Chinese Studies.
In contrast to western negative perceptions, Taylor tried to rehabilitate his image as a man overwhelmed by the difficult conditions of China with warlords, communists, and Japanese threats.
[12][13] Though he lost control of the mainland and violated human rights, Chiang was able to counter the Japanese invasion and laid the foundation for democracy in Taiwan.