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Arthur Ross Book Award

The annual Arthur Ross Book Award recognizes books that make an outstanding contribution to the understanding of foreign policy or international relations. The prize, endowed by the late Arthur Ross in 2001, is for nonfiction works from the past year, in English or translation, that merit special attention for:

  • bringing forth new information that changes the understanding of events or problems;
  • developing analytical approaches that offer insights into critical issues; or
  • introducing ideas that help resolve foreign policy problems.

2017 Awards

Gold Medal
John Pomfret
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present (Henry Holt and Co.)

Silver Medal
Robert F. Worth
A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, From Tahrir Square to ISIS (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Bronze Medal
Svetlana Alexievich
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (Random House)

2017 Shortlist

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon (Simon and Schuster) 
Rosa Brooks

Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939 (Knopf) 
Volker Ullrich

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (Random House) 
Svetlana Alexievich

A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, From Tahrir Square to ISIS (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 
Robert F. Worth 

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present (Henry Holt and Co.) 
John Pomfret

His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt (Knopf) 
Joseph Lelyveld

ISIS: A History (Princeton University Press) 
Fawaz Gerges

Arthur Ross Book Award Events

You can view past Arthur Ross Book Award events and read the transcripts here.

The Past Winners

Here is the list of past winners of the Arthur Ross Book Award, 2002 through 2016.

Procedures

We are no longer accepting nominations for the 2018 Arthur Ross Book Award. If you would like to nominate a book published in 2018 for the 2019 award, please email ARBA@cfr.org with the following in the text of the email:

  • Book title
  • Book author
  • Publication date
  • Publisher name
  • One-page description or press release

For any other inquiries, please email ARBA@cfr.org.

Jury

Gideon Rose (Chair)
Peter G. Peterson Chair and Editor, Foreign Affairs

Lisa Anderson
Former President, American University in Cairo

Nicholas Eberstadt
Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Sumit Ganguly
Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations, Indiana University, Bloomington

Michelle D. Gavin
Senior Fellow for Africa Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Ambassador to Botswana

Walter Russell Mead
James Clarke Chace Professor in Foreign Affairs and Humanities, Bard College

Susan Kaufman Purcell
Independent Consultant

Susan L. Shirk
Research Professor and Chair, 21st Century China Center, UC-San Diego

Calvin G. Sims
President and Chief Executive Officer, International House

Andrew Ross Sorkin
Columnist and Assistant Business Editor, New York Times

News Releases

News Releases

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