John Lewis Gaddis

John Lewis Gaddis (born 1941) is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is best known for his work on the Cold War and grand strategy, and he has been hailed as the "Dean of Cold War Historians" by The New York Times. Gaddis is also the official biographer of the seminal 20th-century American statesman George F. Kennan. George F. Kennan: An American Life (2011), his biography of Kennan, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

On Grand Strategy

In his book On Grand Strategy, Gaddis distils lessons from one of Yale University’s most popular courses, one he has co-facilitated for years. There is always a sizable waitlist to join this yearlong survey of primary texts from antiquity and historical case studies. By examining the lives and writings of leaders and writers from the last several millennia, Gaddis shows us how grand plans succeed and where they tend to falter.


Bio information sourced from Wikipedia