Douglas Brinkley

Douglas Brinkley is a fellow at Baker Institute and a professor of history at Rice University. He is a prominent historian, specializing in presidential and 20th century history, with more than 30 books to his credit. His most recent project, “The Reagan Diaries,” was published in 2007 and was listed as number one on The New York Times best sellers list for nonfiction. He expects to complete the editing of additional volumes of the President Ronald Reagan’s diaries in 2008 while working at the institute.

Brinkley was invited to join the Baker Institute following his departure from New Orleans, where he was professor of history at Tulane University and director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization. Prior to that, he taught history at the University of New Orleans and was director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies. From 1991 to 1993 he taught at Hofstra University, where he spearheaded the American Odyssey course, in which he took students on numerous cross-country treks where they visited historic sites and met seminal figures in politics and literature.

Brinkley’s 1994 book, “The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey” chronicled his first experience teaching this innovative on-the-road class which became the progenitor of C-SPAN’s “Yellow School Buss.” Brinkley started his career by spending a year teaching history at both the U.S. Naval Academy and Princeton University. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Ohio State University and received his doctorate in U.S. diplomatic history from Georgetown University in 1989.

Brinkley, a prolific writer, is best known for four biographies: “Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years” (1992); “Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal,” with Townsend Hoopes (1992); “The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House” (1998); and “Wheels For the World: Henry Ford, His Company and Century of Progress” (2003). He has two recent additions to that list published in 2006 and 2007: “The Reagan Diaries” and “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” which won the 2007 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Brinkley’s current projects include writing a book about the conservationist movement and President Theodore Roosevelt, writing a biography of Walter Cronkite, and editing the third volume of letters of journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

Brinkley is the official historian for CBS News and a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and American Heritage. A frequent contributor to The New York Times, Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and The Atlantic Monthly, he is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Century Club. In a profile the Chicago Tribune deemed him "America’s new past master."