JOHN O. CRANE ( December 28, 1899-May 16, 1982) served as research and press secretary to the founding president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk. An historian, John Crane lectured on Central Europe for two summers at the University of Chicago and was the founder of the Institute of Current World Affairs. He was the author of The Little Entente ( New York: Macmillan, 1931).
SYLVIA E. CRANE, historian and journalist, is the author of White Silence: Greenough, Powers, and Crawford--American Sculptors in Nineteenth-Century Italy ( Miami: University of Miami Press, 1972). She has published widely abroad in such journals as Le Monde Diplomatique, Esprit, and Témoignage Chrétien in Paris, Il Ponte in Florence, Astrolabio in Rome, The Humanist in Canada in Ottawa, and Transatlantik in Munich.
During World War II, while engaged in public relations, she was requested by Czechoslovak ambassador Vladimír Hurban to arrange a public meeting in New York for President Beneš, in concert with John Crane. This collaboration between John and Sylvia was the beginning of a joint involvement with Czechoslovak affairs that deepened after their marriage in 1945 and continued until John's death in 1982. Sylvia then employed her training as an historian to research and complete this work.
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