GW’s Goldgeier Reflects on Award Winning Book

What can professors do when they cannot find a book on the subject they want? They simply write their own.

This scenario was exactly what prompted James M. Goldgeier, a professor of politics and international affairs at GW and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, to write his most recent work, “America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11: The Misunderstood Years Between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror.”

Much to the delight and surprise of Goldgeier and his co-author Derek Chollet, “America Between the Wars” was recently named by Slate Magazine as one of the best books of 2008.

Goldgeier said the idea came from conversations he had in fall 2005 with Chollet, who at the time was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. “We were very frustrated that most of what we were assigning for class didn’t really have any appreciation for the period before 9/11,” said Goldgeier. “So we decided to do something about it.”

Since the book’s publication in June 2008, it has received positive reviews from both international and national publications, such as The New York Times, and Goldgeier said the book is currently in use at various universities across the country.

Goldgeier is pleased that his work is being used in an academic setting. He also assigned the book to his own American Foreign Policy class during fall semester, which was “a lot of fun,” adding, “I’m able to give the students a flavor of what didn’t end up in the book.”

“We wanted basically for students to walk away, not thinking that history started on September 11, 2001,” he said. “The basic message of our book is that history did not end in 1989, nor did it start on September 11th, there was important stuff that was taking place in the 12 years in between.”

However, he stressed that the book is not just for academics, but the general public as well. “You can’t understand where we are today in American foreign policy, America’s relations with the rest of the world, you can’t understand any of those things unless you look back at this period between the end of the Cold War and the start of the War on Terror.”

“America Between the Wars” is Goldgeier’s third book on American foreign policy. As a former State Department official and former staff member of the National Security Council, he found that those experiences greatly helped writing all three works. “It gave me a better understanding of the way in which policy gets made.”

While taking the spring on leave from GW, Goldgeier said he plans on beginning his fourth book, but that the subject is undetermined. “I’m going to start working on it this spring and then however long it takes,” he said.

“We’ve been really thrilled with the reviews, we’re just glad people read it and seemed to like it,” said Goldgeier of the whole experience.

While Goldgeier had hoped the work would be well received, he said he could not have anticipated the degree to which the book’s success would exceed his expectations. “When Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times did a review we were totally surprised. We didn’t know she was doing it until the review appeared,” he said. “That was pretty exciting.”

Besides teaching classes at GW, Goldgeier does research at the Council on Foreign Relations, located within walking distance from campus. He runs a seminar series there on U.S.-European Relations for the Council, and said he finds both jobs “go well together, they’re supposed to,” he laughed.

One of the biggest pieces of advice Goldgeier said he would give to students is to get to know their professors, and take advantage of their office hours. “There are lots of people who at GWU who are great in the classroom, but they can also help students get their foot in the door outside the classroom,” said Goldgeier. Currently, two of his former students work as research assistants at the Council for Foreign Relations.

Although he is currently on leave, he plans on returning to GW in the fall. He encouraged his future students to visit during his office hours. “I often sit in my office hours and end up reading the paper,” Goldgeier lamented. “It’s nuts.”