William Taubman

William Taubman is an American political scientist, author, and professor emeritus of political science at Amherst College. He is best known for writing Gorbachev: His Life and Times, a detailed biography of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Taubman’s book reveals how the man who rose to become one of the most powerful figures in the world shaped the Soviet Union from his days as a junior apparatchik to his role in dismantling the Communist system. In addition to his work on the former Soviet Union, Taubman has written about the life and career of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Taubman was born in 1938 in Passaic, New Jersey and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in political science from Columbia University. He then pursued an academic career, teaching at Princeton and Harvard before assuming his position at Amherst College. He was awarded a Fulbright grant in 1967 to spend a year at the Lenin Institute in Moscow, where he conducted research on the CPSU.

Taubman’s most renowned work is Gorbachev: His Life and Times. The biography, published in 2017, covers the details of Gorbachev’s life; revealing Gorbachev's journey as a young Communist Party official to the leader of the Soviet Union who helped shape the end of the Cold War. Taubman provides an intriguing look at how Gorbachev thought and acted in various situations. His exploration into Gorbachev’s life draws from interviews with the former Soviet leader, a variety of other sources, and his own personal experiences living in the Soviet Union.

The book was widely praised by critics and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2018. The Pulitzer jury praised Taubman’s book for its “seamless, vividly written narrative that matches commanding scholarship with an understanding of the customs, culture, and humanity that shaped history’s most influential leader in the Soviet Union.” According to the Pulitzer committee, Taubman’s work “reconnects the reader to the human story behind the power of one of the 20th Century’s most transformative figures.”

In addition to his work on Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Taubman has written several other books and articles on the Soviet Union and other topics related to the Cold War and modern history. He has served as president of the American Political Science Association, a board member at organizations such as Freedom House and the American Slavic and East European Review, and an advisor to several government agencies and non-profit organizations.

In his writing, Taubman has combined a mastery of the material, an easy-to-understand writing style, and a broad understanding of world history. His work on Gorbachev is an impressive accomplishment in itself and is likely to remain a prominent reference resource for some time.