Douglas Brinkley

Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a position he has held since 2007. He is a CNN Presidential Historian, a Presidential Historian for the New York Historical Society since 2017, and a seven-time New York Times best-selling author. In addition to these roles, he has also been recognized as a public spokesperson on conservation issues.

A sought-after commentator on U.S. presidential history, Brinkley has written books on Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. He also served as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. His notable works include "The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast," and "Cronkite," which received the Ann M. Sperber Prize in 2013.

Brinkley has published over thirty books, seven of which have become New York Times bestsellers, and six have been selected as New York Times' “Notable Books of the Year." His repertoire also includes several award-winning books. His book "American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race" was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2020, and he has won Grammy Awards for his contributions to jazz and Latin jazz albums, including "Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom" by the Ted Nash Big Band in 2017, and "Fandango At The Wall In New York" by Arturo O’Farrill and The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra in 2023.

He has won numerous awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award for "The American Heritage History of the United States" and the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for "Driven Patriot." Brinkley was awarded the BusinessWeek “Book of the Year Award” for "Wheels for the World" and was also named 2004 “Humanist of the Year” by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. In recognition of his service to conservation efforts, he was awarded the Frances K. Hutchison Medal by the Garden Club of America in 2021. He has received honorary doctorates from numerous institutions, including Hofstra University, Allegheny College, University of Maine, and Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, among others.

Before Rice, Brinkley served as professor of history and director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University in New Orleans. From 1994 until 2005, he was the Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. During his tenure there, he wrote two books with the late Professor Ambrose, "Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938" and "The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today." He was also named the inaugural historian in residence at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in the summer of 2021.