2010 Recipient

The Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize, established in 1987 and sponsored by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph dealing with the international relations, foreign policy, or foreign-policy decision-making of any of the states of the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe published in the previous calendar year. The prize is dedicated to the encouragement of high-quality studies of the international behavior of the countries of the former Communist Bloc.

Co-Winner: Mary Elise Sarotte
Title: 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton University Press)

Mary Elise Sarotte’s book, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, tells the fascinating story of the beginning of the end of the Cold War: the collapse of the Berlin Wall and East Germany’s unification with West Germany a year later. Despite the fact that her readers all know how the story ends, the book unfolds like a page-turner, rather than an historical chronology. Sarotte sketches the primary Soviet, German, European, and US characters with the depth they deserve, and explains in detail the consequences of their many meetings. She reveals how the reunification of Germany was hardly pre-ordained and also how Moscow’s consent sowed the seeds of future distrust between the US and Russia.

Co-Winner: Lorenz Lüthi

Honorable Mention: Keith Darden