The Ohio State University

Melvyn Leffler

"For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War"

Friday, February 8, 2008
Noon
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201

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Melvyn Leffler is Edward Stettinius Professor of American History at the University of Virginia.

He is author most recently of an analysis of the Cold War, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.  Drawing on extensive research in American and Soviet archives, Leffler offers an account of the forces that constrained Soviet and American leaders in the second half of the 20th century.

The book examines four crucial episodes when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding, or ending hostilities and asks why they failed: Stalin and Truman devising new policies after 1945; Malenkov and Eisenhower exploring the chance for peace after Stalin’s death in 1953; Kennedy, Khrushchev, and LBJ trying to reduce tensions after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; and Brezhnev and Carter aiming to sustain détente after the Helsinki Conference of 1975.

Leffler is also author and editor of many other books and articles on U.S. foreign relations.  His volume on the national security policy of the Truman administration, A Preponderance of Power, won the Bancroft Prize and many other awards.  Leffler has also written on U.S.-European relations in the inter-war years and on the policies of the George W. Bush administration.  He is now co-editing with Odd Arne Westad the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War.

Leffler has served as the President of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and has been the recipient of senior fellowships from the Norwegian Nobel Peace Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center, United States Institute of Peace, Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, and Lehrman Institute. 

In 2002-03, he was the Harmsworth Professor at the University of Oxford, and, this past fall, he was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Christ College, Cambridge.

Leffler has a B.S. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.

Melvyn Leffler
Edward Stettinius Professor of American History
University of Virginia