Elizabeth Cobbs

Elizabeth Cobbs specializes in U.S. foreign relations and also writes more broadly on world and American history. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and holds the Melbern G. Glasscock Chair at Texas A&M and is a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. She is the author of seven books, the latest being The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers (Harvard 2017), about World War One and women’s suffrage, and The Hamilton Affair, A Novel (Arcade 2016), about the American Revolution. Her first book, The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil (Yale 1992) won the Allan Nevins Prize and the Stuart L. Bernath Prize. Her first novel, Broken Promises: A Novel of the Civil War (Random House 2011) won the San Diego Book Award and received Director’s Mention for the David J. Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction. In 2016, American Public Television broadcast her first film, American Umpire, on the history and future of U.S. grand strategy. Sponsored by WETA-Washington, it won “Best Short Documentary” at the San Diego G.I. Film Festival in 2017. Her other books include American Umpire (Harvard 2013), All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the 1960s (Harvard 2000), and four editions of the textbook Major Problems in American History (Cengage 2002-2015). She has written essays and articles for The New York Times, Reuters, Jerusalem Post, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, San Jose Mercury, San Diego Union, Washington Independent, Politico, and The Hill, as well as various academic journals