Melvyn P. Leffler

Leffler commands my genuine respect as one of the foremost historians of the Cold War. A Preponderance of Power, his study of the Truman administration and national security, earned the Bancroft Prize, and his work on the soul of the era took the George Louis Beer Prize too. From Brooklyn to Ohio State to a professorship at the University of Virginia, he built a career on the unglamorous, exhausting labor of wrestling vast archives into coherent narrative. We learn from the past only because rigorous minds like his keep re-examining it. I hold this kind of patient scholarship in the highest regard.

Name (English)

Melvyn P. Leffler

Name (Japanese)

メルヴィン・レフラー

Reading

めるゔぃん・れふらー

Born

May 31, 1945 (age 81)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Rooster

Origin

Brooklyn, New York, United States

Occupation

historian

University

Ohio State University

Awards & achievements

• 1993 Bancroft Prize
• 2008 George Louis Beer Prize

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A1%E3%83%AB%E3%83%B4%E3%82%A3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AC%E3%83%95%E3%83%A9%E3%83%BC

Tags

• New York
• historian

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.