Background
Bondurant was born on 16 December 1918 in Great Bend, Kansas.
Bondurant was born on 16 December 1918 in Great Bend, Kansas.
She was gifted in the piano, and graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in music
She is best known as the author of Conquest of Violence (1958), a book on Gandhian political philosophy. When World World War II broke out, she learned Japanese, and was sent to work for the Office of Strategic Services 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.
Later, she took a job teaching at University of the Pacific.
Returning to the United States, Bondurant obtained a doctoral degree in political science at the University of California, Berkeley (1952). She then published Conquest of Violence (1958), a widely reviewed and influential book on Gandhian politics. Indian approaches to a socialist society.