Joan Valérie Bondurant, born in Great Bend, Kansas, was an American political scientist and spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. She was gifted in the piano, and graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in music. When World War II broke out, she learned Japanese, and was sent to work for the OSS in India, arriving in New Delhi in May 1944. While in India, she met Mahatma Gandhi and became interested in his nonviolent approach to politics. Returning to the US, Bondurant obtained a doctoral degree in political science at the University of California, Berkeley (1952). She is best known as the author of *Conquest of Violence: The Ghandian Philosophy of Conflict* (1958), a book on Gandhian political philosophy. Later, she became a Professor of Politics at Callison College of the University of the Pacific and a Fellow of the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She contributed numerous articles to scholarly publications on the subjects of political and social change in South Asia, Indian political thought, and problems of conflict and conflict resolution. Sources: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Bondurant) and [About the Author](https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Violence-Nonviolence-Margaret-Fisher-ebook/dp/B075CNF3P4/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)