Our Books section below includes recent books published by Hoover History Lab authors, whether published by Hoover Institution press or outside publishers.
See also Articles, Commentary, and Policy Briefs from the Hoover History Lab.
New Deal Law and Order: How the War on Crime Built the Modern Liberal State
By Anthony Gregory
June 11, 2024
A historian traces the origins of the modern law-and-order state to a surprising source: the liberal policies of the New Deal.
The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation
By Victor Davis Hanson
May 7, 2024
A New York Times–bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time
Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative
By Jennifer Burns via Farrar, Straus and Giroux
November 14, 2023
The first full biography of America’s most renowned economist.
Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine
By Gen. David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts
October 17, 2023
Two leading authorities—an acclaimed historian and the outstanding battlefield commander and strategist of our time—collaborate on a landmark examination of war since 1945. Conflict is both a sweeping history of the evolution of warfare up to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, and a penetrating analysis of what we must learn from the past—and anticipate in the future….
Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives
By Josiah Ober
September 19, 2023
A powerful case for democracy and how it can adapt and survive—if we want it to.
Bread + Medicine: American Famine Relief in Soviet Russia, 1921–1923
By Bertrand M. Patenaude, Joan Nabseth Stevenson via Hoover Institution Press
June 1, 2023
Recounts how medical intervention, including a large-scale vaccination drive, by the American Relief Administration saved millions of lives in Soviet Russia during the famine of 1921–23
Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement
By Cole Bunzel
May 16, 2023
An essential history of Wahhābism from its founding to the Islamic State.
Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report
By Philip Zelikow, Covid Crisis Group
April 25, 2023
This powerful report on what went wrong—and right—with America’s Covid response, from a team of 34 experts, shows how Americans faced the worst peacetime catastrophe of modern times.
The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason
By Josiah Ober
November 29, 2022
Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations
China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower
By Frank Dikötter
November 15, 2022
From internationally renowned historian Frank Dikötter, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, a myth-shattering history of China from the death of Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping.
The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III
By Andrew Roberts via Viking
November 9, 2021
The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating--and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy.
The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
By Victor Davis Hanson
September 2, 2021
The New York Times bestselling author of The Case for Trump explains the decline and fall of the once cherished idea of American citizenship.
Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe
By Niall Ferguson
May 4, 2021
Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.
Asia’s New Geopolitics
By Michael R. Auslin
March 23, 2020
As Asia rises, geopolitical competition once again threatens its future. China’s aggressiveness, Sino-Japanese rivalry, regional territorial disputes, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons are shaping the Indo-Pacific and the world.
How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century
By Frank Dikötter
November 20, 2019
No dictator can rule through fear and violence alone. Naked power can be grabbed and held temporarily, but it never suffices in the long term. In the twentieth century, as new technologies allowed leaders to place their image and voice directly into their citizens' homes, a new phenomenon appeared where dictators exploited the cult of personality to achieve the illusion of popular approval without ever having to resort to elections.
Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History
By Andrew Roberts
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
A comparison of nine leaders who led their nations through the greatest wars the world has ever seen and whose unique strengths--and weaknesses--shaped the course of human history, from the bestselling, award-winning author of Churchill and Napoleon.
Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty
By Norman M. Naimark
October 8, 2019
The Cold War division of Europe was not inevitable―the acclaimed author of Stalin’s Genocides shows how postwar Europeans fought to determine their own destinies. Was the division of Europe after World War II inevitable? In this powerful reassessment of the postwar order in Europe, Norman Naimark suggests that Joseph Stalin was far more open to a settlement on the continent than we have thought. Through revealing case studies from Poland and Yugoslavia to Denmark and Albania, Naimark recasts the early Cold War by focusing on Europeans’ fight to determine their future.
To Build a Better World
By Condoleezza Rice, Philip Zelikow
October 2, 2019
Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form. Beginning in the late 1970s and carrying into the present, they focus on the momentous period between 1988 and 1992, when an entire world system changed, states broke apart, and societies were transformed. Such periods have always been accompanied by terrible wars-but not this time.
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
By: Niall Ferguson
September 17, 2019
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot. Call it what you like, it matters now more than ever. In The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is the foundation of all human progress and the lifeblood of history. From the cash injection that funded the Italian Renaissance to the stock market bubble that sparked the French Revolution, from the bonds that fuelled Britain's war effort to the Wall Street Crash and today's meltdown, this is the story of boom and bust as it's never been told before. Whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's no better time to understand the ascent of money.
Defining Moments
By Bertrand M. Patenaude
August 15, 2019
A century ago, amid the devastation of World War I, Herbert Hoover established a collection of library and archival materials at Stanford University devoted to the causes and consequences of war. Founded as the Hoover War Collection in 1919, the institution has evolved into one of the world’s premier research centers devoted to the advanced study of politics, economics, and international affairs.
Churchill: Walking with Destiny
By Andrew Roberts
July 25, 2019
In this landmark biography of Winston Churchill based on extensive new material, the true genius of the man, statesman and leader can finally be fully seen and understood--by the bestselling, award-winning author of Napoleon and The Storm of War.
Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941
By Stephen Kotkin
October 31, 2017
In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost.
Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928
By: Stephen Kotkin
November 6, 2014
A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world.
Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives
By Paul R. Gregory
August 14, 2013
During the course of three decades, Joseph Stalin's Gulag, a vast network of forced labor camps and settlements, held many millions of prisoners. People in every corner of the Soviet Union lived in daily terror of imprisonment and execution.
