Council’s 2006 Arthur Ross Book Award Shortlist Announced

Five Authors to Compete for Most Significant International Affairs Book Award

March 2, 2006—The Council has announced the fifth annual Arthur Ross Book Award shortlist nominees for the best book published in the last two years on international affairs.

• Tony Judt for Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin Press). An insightful and animated chronicle of Europe since the fall of Berlin. Judt covers the broad strokes as well as the fine details of the years 1945–2005 and treats the entire continent as a whole, providing equal coverage of social changes, economic forces, and cultural shifts in western and eastern Europe.
• George Packer for The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In a powerful retelling of how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerilla war in Iraq, Packer brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration’s war policy.
• Robert A. Pape for Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House). In the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack since 1980, Pape clearly and precisely debunks the misconceptions about the nature of suicide terrorism and through groundbreaking evidence explains the strategic, social, and individual factors responsible for this growing threat.
• Olivier Roy for Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (Columbia University Press). In a brilliant exegesis of the movement of Islam beyond traditional borders and its unwitting westernization, Roy argues that the Islamic revival results from the efforts of westernized Muslims to assert their identity in a non-Muslim context.
• Stephen M. Walt for Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (W.W. Norton). In an elegant and provocative book, Walt analyzes the different strategies employed by other states to counter U.S. power or harness it for their needs, and shows how these responses threaten America’s ability to achieve its foreign policy goals and may eventually undermine its dominant position.

The Council’s Arthur Ross Book Award is the most significant award for a book on international affairs. It was endowed by Arthur Ross in 2001 to honor nonfiction works, in English or translation, that merit special attention for: bringing forth new information that changes our understanding of events or problems; developing analytical approaches that allow new and different insights into critical issues; or providing new ideas that help resolve foreign policy problems.

The award consists of a $25,000 first prize, a $10,000 second prize, and a $5,000 honorable mention.

The winners will be announced in early May and will be honored at a dinner in June at the Council in New York.

ARTHUR ROSS BOOK AWARD JURY

Lael Brainard

Senior Fellow, Economic and Foreign Policy Studies

The Brookings Institution

Rose Gottemoeller

Director of Carnegie Moscow Center

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Stanley Hoffmann

Paul & Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor

Harvard University

James F. Hoge, Jr. (Chairman)

Peter G. Peterson Chair & Editor

Foreign Affairs

Robert W. Kagan

Senior Associate

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Miles Kahler

Rohr Professor of International Relations

University of California, San Diego

Michael A. McFaul

Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow

Hoover Institution

Arthur Ross*

Vice Chairman

United Nations Association of the U.S.A.

*ex officio