John W. Dardess was born to John and Edna Wolfe Dardess in Chatham, New York. Dardess graduated from Georgetown University in 1958. After serving in the US Army, where he learned Chinese, Dardess joined the Association for Asian Studies in 1962. In 1968, he received a doctorate from Columbia University with his dissertation, "Background Factors in the Rise of the Ming Dynasty."

Dardess became a history professor at the University of Kansas (KU) in 1966, specializing in Ming Dynasty studies. While at KU, Dardess also served as the Director of the Center for East Asian Studies from 1995 to 1997. Dardess became professor emeritus in 2002.

A profilic writer, Dardess authored 10 academic books, including Conquerors and Confucians: Aspects of Political Change in Late Yuan China (1973), Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (1983), A Ming Society: T'ai-Ho County, Kiangsi, Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (1996), Blood and History in China: The Donglin Faction and Its Repression, 1620-1627 (2002), La Cina II: L'età imperiale dai Tre Regni ai Qing (2010), Governing China, 150-1850 (2010), Ming China, 1368-1644 (2012), A Political Life in Ming China: A Grand Secretary and His Times (2013), Four Seasons: A Ming Emperor and His Grand Secretaries in Sixteenth-Century China (2016), and More Than the Great Wall: The Northern Frontier and Ming National Security, 1368-1644 (posthumously, 2020).

Dardess also wrote many articles, book reviews, and book chapters throughout his career that were included in journals and academic volumes including the Journal of Asian Studies, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Ming Studies, Bulletin of Sung and Yüan Studies, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Chinese Historical Review, International History Review, China Review International, American Historical Review, T'oung Pao, China Quarterly, and History: Reviews of New Books. Dardess also contributed entries to the Dictionary of Ming Biography.