Presenting the 2016 Ena H. Thompson Distinguish Lecturer: Greg Grandin

Greg Grandin is the author of a number of prize-winning books, including the forthcoming Kissinger's Shadow. The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World won the Bancroft Prize in American History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in the UK. NPR’s Maureen Corrigan on Fresh Air named The Empire of Necessity as the best book of 2014, both non-fiction and fiction. He is also the author of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan 2009). A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, as well as for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Fordlandia was picked by the New York Times, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and NPR for their "best of" lists, and Amazon.com named it the best history book of 2009. Grandin is also the author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Empire (Metropolitan 2005), The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America During the Cold War (University of Chicago Press 2004), and Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Duke University Press, 2000), which won the Latin American Studies Association’s Bryce Wood Award for the best book published on Latin America in any discipline. With Gil Joseph, he edited A Century of Revolution (Duke University Press).

A professor of history at NYU and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Grandin writes on U.S. foreign policy, Latin America, genocide, and human rights.  He has published in The New York Times, Harper’s, The London Review of Books, The Nation, The Boston Review, The Los Angeles Times, and The American Historical Review. He has been a frequent guest on "Democracy Now!" and has appeared on "The Charlie Rose Show." Grandin also served as a consultant to the United Nations truth commission on Guatemala and has been the recipient of a number of fellowships, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.