John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, spoke to faculty and students at the Mershon Center today on "George F. Kennan: An American Life." The event was part of the center’s Diplomatic History Speaker Series organized by Robert McMahon, Ralph D. Mershon Professor of History.

Hailed as the "Dean of Cold War Historians" by The New York Times, Gaddis is a noted historian of the Cold War and grand strategy. He is the official biographer of the seminal 20th century statesman George F. Kennan, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2012.

Gaddis's visit was part of the Diplomatic History Speaker Series, organized by Robert McMahon.

Gaddis is also author of numerous other books, including The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972); Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security (1982); The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987); We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997); The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (2002); Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (2004); and The Cold War: A New History (2006).

Gaddis founded and directed the Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University in 1987, and served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1992. He has also held visiting positions at the Naval War College, Oxford University, Princeton University, and the University of Helsinki. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2005.

Gaddis’s lecture can be viewed as a streaming video in Windows Media or RealPlayer, or downloaded as a podcast from the Mershon subscription page.

Photo:
John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, speaks on "George F. Kennan: An American Life." His book of the same name won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2012.