12.17.08
Lefler Book tapped to win Prize
In today’s show, based on a recent article by Matt Kelly, News Writer with the Office of Public Affairs, we look at former dean of UVa’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Melvyn P. Leffler, who recently was named to receive the American Historical Association’s 2008 George Louis Beer Prize for his book “For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.”
Melvyn P. Leffler, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, will receive the American Historical Association’s 2008 George Louis Beer Prize for his book “For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.”
Leffler, named the Randolph Jennings Fellow at the United States Institution for Peace in 2004 and Henry A. Kissinger Fellow in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress in 2004 said he was surprised and deeply gratified by the award, which he will receive in January at the association’s annual meeting in New York City.
Leffler said he has a passion for the history of foreign relations because international diplomacy involves “some of the most important things — war and peace, life and death…”and he went on to say, “This is the best prize the American Historical Association gives to a writer of history of international relations. It is exhilarating to be able to step down from the deanship and revive one’s scholarly career.”
Published in 2007, Leffler’s book examines four crucial episodes during the Cold War when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding or ending hostilities, and asks why they failed. He then illuminates how U.S. and Soviet leaders were able to reconfigure Soviet-American relations after decades of confrontation.”
Interested in why it lasted as long as it did and why it ended when it did, Leffler concluded that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, without losing his faith in communism, transformed many of his ideological views on what was necessary to improve the political and economic systems in Russia. Leffler also credited U.S. President Ronald Reagan with building up the U.S. military and then negotiating from that position of strength.
Leffler said, “The importance of Reagan was that he did want to negotiate with the men who ran the ‘Evil Empire.’”
Duane Osheim, chairman of U.Va.’s history department, said, “Mel is internationally recognized as a scholar of the Cold War and he richly deserves this prize. His book is an important work on United States foreign policy during the Cold War. It is instructive because of the thoughtfulness he gives to the values and the ideology of both sides…”
The Economist, a respected news magazine, praised the book as “a highly relevant and much-needed historical study, one of the best books on the period to have been written.”
Leffler is currently co-editing, with Norwegian scholar Odd Arne Westad, the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War, a project that has engaged the pair for the past eight years.
Ann Goldberg, associate professor of history at the University of California-Riverside, who chaired the award committee that selected Leffler’s book, said “The Soul of Mankind” is a “masterful treatment” that will become required reading. Using newly accessible archival sources, Leffler constructs a richly nuanced, empirically rigorous history of the Cold War that avoids the ideological blinkers of past Cold War scholarship”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. The College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia, WTJU and myself would like to thank you for joining us this past year as we have examined many different people and points of interest concerning UVa and its impact on the world.
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