112 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL In 1991 my colleague and friend Foreign Service Officer Kenneth C. Wimmel retired from the U.S. Information Agency and launched a distinguished late career as a nonfiction writer. By the time of his passing nine years later, his work had earned a place in libraries worldwide, including Harvard and Oxford, and the national archives of France, China, and Germany. A self-taught historian, Wimmel first demonstrated his research skills by winning a Naval War College prize for an essay on the strategic decision to establish a military base in the Indian Ocean. Wimmel’s diplomatic career took him across Asia, beginning in 1963 in New Delhi, where he married Arati Sinha. His overseas assignments included Dhaka, Saigon, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, and beyond, stoking his interest in Asia. Inspired to write a biography of American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, famous for discovering a cache of dinosaur eggs in Mongolia in 1923, Wimmel had to pivot after Andrews’ papers were reserved for an authorized biographer. Remembering Kenneth Wimmel: Diplomat, Writer, Historian BY DON HAUSRATH REFLECTIONS He repurposed his research into his first book, The Alluring Target: In Search of the Secrets of Central Asia. During the book’s development, Wimmel discovered that one of his subjects, 91-year-old Ella Maillart, was still alive. He met me in Vienna, and we traveled together to Geneva, stopping in Aix-en-Provence to visit the archives of another subject, Alexandra David-Néel. In Geneva, Ella shared vivid recollections of camel, horseback, and mule journeys across Central Asia. “It can’t happen today,” she reflected. Struck by her words, Wimmel persuaded her to let them serve as the book’s foreword. With Ella’s introduction, The Alluring Target was published in 1996 to strong sales and critical praise. A Booklist review describes its vivid depictions of biplanes braving Himalayan gales, shootouts with Mongolian bandits, and Silk Road discoveries. Featuring figures like Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, adventurer Arnold Henry Savage Landor, and mystic David-Néel, Wimmel brought to life a world of intrigue and discovery. Wimmel’s second book, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet: American Sea Power Comes of Age (2000), explored America’s transformation into a global power. He chose a line from Treasure Island—“We can steer a course, but who’s to set one?” Long John Silver asks—as the epigraph for an account of Roosevelt’s push to modernize the U.S. Navy. In 1880 the fleet was smaller than Peru’s, but Roosevelt championed its revitalization by overcoming congressional and naval resistance. By 1909 the Great White Fleet— 16 coal-fired battleships— had completed a historic world tour, cementing the U.S. as a global force. Wimmel’s final work, William Woodville Rockhill: ScholarDiplomat of the Tibetan Highlands (2003), was published in Bangkok Don Hausrath entered the U.S. Information Agency as a Foreign Service librarian in 1971. He retired in 1995 with the rank of Counselor after opening U.S. Information Service libraries in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Russia. From left, Kenneth Wimmel, travel writer Ella Maillart, Sydney Hausrath, and Don Hausrath in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 1994. COURTESY OF DON HAUSRATH
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