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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 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

The Past Winners

See the list of past winners, 2002 through 2016

2016 Awards

Gold Medal
Niall Ferguson
Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist (Penguin Press)

Silver Medal
Thomas Christensen
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power (W.W. Norton & Company)

Bronze Medal
Charles Moore
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography—Volume II: Everything She Wants (Penguin Random House)

2016 Shortlist

Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist (Penguin Press)
Niall Ferguson

Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition (Hougton Miflin Harcourt)
Nisid Hajari

The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power (W.W. Norton & Company)
Thomas Christensen

The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq (PublicAffairs)
Emma Sky

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography: Volume II (Allen Lane)
Charles Moore

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (Penguin Random House)
Timothy D. Snyder

Procedures

We are no longer accepting nominations for the 2017 Arthur Ross Book Award. If you would like to nominate a book published in 2017 for next year’s award, please email ARBA@cfr.org with the following by Sunday, February 18, 2018.

  • book title and author
  • publication date
  • 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
Director, Center on American and Global Security, Indiana University, Bloomington

Michelle D. Gavin
Former U.S. 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

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