Department of History at The George Washington University

James Hershberg explores the international history of the Cold War, with special attention to the impact of newly available sources from the former communist world as well as from U.S. and other Western archives. This research builds on his ongoing work with the Woodrow Wilson Center's Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), the National Security Archive at GWU, and his own research in U.S., British, Russian, Polish, Canadian and other archives. His first book examined the life of James B. Conant, the former Harvard president, atomic bomb project administrator, diplomat, and educational commentator. Current and recent projects include books on new evidence on the Vietnam War and Cuban Missile Crisis, and scholarly and popular articles on various aspects of Cold War, nuclear, and US foreign policy history (the atomic bomb, German question, Iran-contra affair, et al.). Former CWIHP director, he now edits the CWIHP book series co-published by the Stanford University and Wilson Center Presses. Professor Hershberg also co-founded the GWCW, a Cold War studies group at GWU for both faculty and students. He has also promoted archival openings and openness in locales ranging from Iran to Albania to Mongolia to Moldova.

"The Cuban Missile Crisis." In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 2, ed. O.A. Westad and M.P. Leffler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

"Informing the Enemy: Sino-American 'Signaling' and the Vietnam War, 1965." In Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the Cold War, ed. Priscilla Roberts, 193-257. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2006. Co-authored with Chen Jian.

"'The Jig Was Up': J. Robert Oppenheimer and the International Control of Atomic Energy, 1947-49." In Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections, ed. Cathryn Carson and David A. Hollinger, 149-183. Berkeley: Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, 2005.

"The United States, Brazil, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (Parts 1 & 2)." Journal of Cold War Studies 6, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 3-20, and no. 3 (Summer 2004): 5-67.

"Peace Probes and the Bombing Pause: Hungarian and Polish Diplomacy During the Vietnam War, December 1965-January 1966." Journal of Cold War Studies 5, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 32-67.

James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age. New York: Knopf, 1993.

Winner, 1994 Stuart Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Policy for the best first book on the history of American foreign relations.
Republished by Stanford University Press, 1995.