Lionel Gelber Prize Archives

To End a Plague: America’s Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa

With his 2003 announcement of a program known as PEPFAR, George W. Bush launched an astonishingly successful American war against a global pandemic. PEPFAR played a key role in slashing HIV cases and AIDS deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to the brink of epidemic control. Resilient in the face of flatlined funding and political headwinds, PEPFAR is America’s singular example of how to fight long-term plague—and win. […Learn More]

In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918–1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust

Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms—ethnic riots—dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true. […Learn More]

Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology

An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world’s most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict. […Learn More]

No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria

Award-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict through the dramatic stories of four young people seeking safety and freedom in a shattered country. Hailed by critics, No Turning Back masterfully “[weaves] together the lives of protestors, victims, and remorseless killers at the center of this century’s most appalling human tragedy” (Robert F. Worth). Based on more than five years of fearless, clandestine reporting, No Turning Back brings readers deep inside Bashar al-Assad’s prisons, to covert meetings where foreign states and organizations manipulated the rebels, and to the highest levels of Islamic militancy and the formation of the Islamic State. […Learn More]

The American War in Afghanistan: A History

The first authoritative history of American’s longest war by one of the world’s leading scholar-practitioners.

The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, is now the longest armed conflict in the nation’s history. It is currently winding down, and American troops are likely to leave soon but only after a stay of nearly two decades.
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Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons

Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? […Learn More]

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

The first serious book to examine what happens when the ancient boundary between war and peace is erased.

Once, war was a temporary state of affairs—a violent but brief interlude between times of peace. Today, America’s wars are everywhere and forever: our enemies change constantly and rarely wear uniforms, and virtually anything can become a weapon. As war expands, so does the role of the US military. […Learn More]

Book cover of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? by Graham Allison

Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydide’s Trap

From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the conditions that could produce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China??—??and how it might be prevented.

China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve. […Learn More]

Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World

In Islamic Exceptionalism, Brookings Institution scholar and acclaimed author Shadi Hamid offers a novel and provocative argument on how Islam is, in fact, “exceptional” in how it relates to politics, with profound implications for how we understand the future of the Middle East. Divides among citizens aren’t just about power but are products of fundamental disagreements over the very nature and purpose of the modern nation state—and the vexing problem of religion’s role in public life. Hamid argues for a new understanding of how Islam and Islamism shape politics by examining different models of reckoning with the problem of religion and state, including the terrifying—and alarmingly successful—example of ISIS. […Learn More]

Kissinger: 1923 – 1968: The Idealist

From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower, the definitive biography of Henry Kissinger, based on unprecedented access to his private papers.

Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award

No American statesman has been as revered or as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Once hailed as “Super K”—the “indispensable man” whose advice has been sought by every president from Kennedy to Obama—he has also been hounded by conspiracy theorists, scouring his every “telcon” for evidence of Machiavellian malfeasance. […Learn More]