author
Jacob Elon Conner
1862–1949
An American writer, political scientist, and diplomat, he moved easily between public service and print. He is remembered for works such as Uncle Sam Abroad and for serving as the first U.S. consul in Saigon in the early 20th century.
1 Audiobook
Uncle Sam Abroad
by Jacob Elon Conner
About the author
Born in Wilmington, Ohio, in 1862, he built a career that mixed scholarship, government work, and writing. Sources available online identify him as a political scientist and diplomat as well as an author, and they connect him to teaching and public-policy work before and after his overseas service.
He is best known in literary records for Uncle Sam Abroad and for later works including Christ Was Not a Jew. Catalog and reference sources also note that he served as the first United States consul in Saigon from 1907 to 1909, a role that placed him at an unusual crossroads of American diplomacy and travel writing.
Conner died in 1949. While he is not a widely known figure today, his books and public career still offer a glimpse of how one early-20th-century American writer engaged with government, foreign service, and big historical questions.