The Hoover History Lab held Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy, a book talk with the author, Francis J. Gavin on Thursday, October 02, 2025 from 4:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. PT in the Shultz Auditorium, George P. Shultz Building.

It seems obvious that we should use history to improve policy. If we have a good understanding of the past, it should enable better decisions in the present, especially in the extraordinarily consequential worlds of statecraft and strategy. But how do we gain that knowledge? How should history be used? Sadly, it is rarely done well, and historians and decision-makers seldom interact. But in this remarkable book, Francis J. Gavin explains the many ways historical knowledge can help us understand and navigate the complex, often confusing world around us.

Good historical work convincingly captures the challenges and complexities the decisionmaker faces. At its most useful, history is less a narrowly defined field of study than a practice, a mental awareness, a discernment, and a responsiveness to the past and how it unfolded into our present world—a discipline in the best sense of the word. Gavin demonstrates how a historical sensibility helps us to appreciate the unexpected; complicates our assumptions; makes the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar; and requires us, without entirely suspending moral judgment, to try to understand others on their own terms. This book is a powerful argument for thinking historically as a way for readers to apply wisdom in encountering what is foreign to them.

FEATURING

Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Previously, he was the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies at MIT and the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. From 2005 until 2010, he directed The American Assembly’s multiyear, national initiative, The Next Generation Project: U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions. He is the founding Chair of the Board of Editors for the Texas National Security Journal. Gavin’s writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971; Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age ; and Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy (Brookings Institution Press), which was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. His IISS-Adelphi book, The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty: Rethinking International Relations and American Grand Strategy in a New Era was published in 2024. In 2025, he published Wonder and Worry: Contemporary History in an Age of Uncertainty with Stolpe Press, 2025 and Thinking Historically – A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy with Yale University Press.

MODERATED BY

Stephen Kotkin is director of the Hoover History Lab, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has been conducting research in the Hoover Library & Archives for more than three decades.

In this wide-ranging Hoover History Lab discussion, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin joins Research Fellow Dan Wang to explore the craft of history and its relevance to the present.

From his office in Hoover Tower, Kotkin reflects on his efforts to answer the big questions of history, guided by a methodology rooted in rigorous archival research, deliberate engagement with contradictory evidence, and a strategic approach to empathy in order to grasp the contexts and motivations that shape human choices at critical historical junctures. In constructing what he calls an “analytical narrative approach” with audiences, he explains how historians can apply their training and skills to show historical patterns, as well as illuminate drivers of change, relationships between structures and agency, and the workings of power: how it is accumulated, exercised, and leaves its mark on societies.

Wang and Kotkin talk about the enormous demand for historical understanding across society and sectors. In responding to that demand, Kotkin underscores the historian’s responsibility to reach both scholarly and public audiences, the dangers of using “junk history” to inform policymaking, and the need for emerging scholars to engage thoughtfully with Artificial Intelligence.

The conversation closes with Kotkin’s reflections about what historical perspective can show us about achieving sustained global peace and prosperity; details about his work and vision at the Hoover History Lab aimed at cultivating rising generations of scholars and meeting widespread public demand for policy-relevant history; and his recommendations for five books that the audience should consider reading.

ABOUT THE HOOVER HISTORY LAB

The Hoover History Lab is not a traditional academic department but instead functions as a hub for research, teaching, and convening—in person and online, in the classroom and in print. The Lab studies and uses history to inform public policy, develops next-generation scholars, and reinforces the work of Hoover’s world-class historians to inform scholarship and the teaching of history at Stanford and beyond.

The Lab’s work is driven by its principal investigators, who spearhead research and research-based policy projects. The Lab also encompasses a strong cohort of “staff scientist-equivalents”: research fellows ranging from the most senior, world-renowned scholars to a full slate of exciting next-generation talents who bring fresh, multifaceted insights to our research. Rounding out our team, some of our postdoctoral scholars serve as research and teaching fellows, and we also leverage the talents of exceptional Stanford undergraduates as our student fellows, who participate in leading-edge research, just as in a scientific laboratory.

This full-range approach to personnel, spanning all ages and levels of experience, ensures that the mission of the lab carries forward into the future and across to other institutions with a positive, powerful impact.