Mary Sarotte

Professor Mary Elise Sarotte is the author, most recently, of Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate. As well as becoming a Foreign Affairs Book of the Year, Not One Inch was shortlisted for both the Cundill History Prize and Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, chosen for the Arthur Ross Prize Silver Medal, and awarded the Pushkin House Prize for Best Non-fiction Book on Russia. One of her earlier books, The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, also became an Economist, Financial Times, and BBC History Book of the Year. And its immediate predecessor, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe—also a Financial Times Book of the Year—became the only book to win both the Ferrell Prize for best book on the history of US foreign policy and the Shulman Prize best book on Soviet foreign policy.

Sarotte holds the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professorship at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC. She earned her AB in History and Science at Harvard University. She went on to earn a PhD in History at Yale, writing her dissertation with support from, among other donors, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Belfer Center. She subsequently served as a White House Fellow and joined the faculty of the University of Cambridge, receiving tenure there before returning to the States. Sarotte is an associate of the Harvard Center for European Studies, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  In academic year 2024-5 she is a Visiting Fellow with the Applied History Project, and will continue her research into contemporary European, Russian, and transatlantic history.