Book talk: Ledford and Sargent on History’s Dead-Hand Grip and how policymakers use – and misuse – the ‘lessons’ of the past.

We are pleased to invite you to a book talk with historians Joseph Ledford and Daniel J. Sargent, editors of History’s Dead-Hand Grip: Politics, Statecraft, and “Lessons” of the Past (Hoover Institution Press, 2026). The editors will discuss the application of historical reasoning to policymaking and explore how leaders and governments around the world reach for the past when they define interests, read threats and justify action – and what happens when they get history wrong and how they could use it more judiciously. The conversation will be moderated by Barnabas Szabo.

About the book

Historical narratives, analogies and supposed "lessons" exert a powerful influence on policymaking. They can serve as a compass for prudent decisions, or as a trap that leads states into strategic error. History’s Dead-Hand Grip takes its cue from Ernest R. May, the pioneer of applied history, and from his classic study "Lessons" of the Past, to ask how policymakers in different parts of the world have used – and misused – history.

In eight chapters, a new generation of scholars carries May’s approach beyond the United States to Asia, the Middle East and South America. The editors revisit American foreign policy, from the Monroe Doctrine and other Founding-era ideas to the present. Other contributors examine Brazil’s middle-power ambitions, shifting Israeli and Saudi statecraft, North Korea’s leadership cult, Indonesia, and the unfolding revolution in artificial intelligence. Several of these countries rarely feature in applied-history scholarship.

The volume grew out of a Hoover History Lab conference held in May 2025 and carries a foreword by Stephen Kotkin. Its contributors are Cole Bunzel, Norman Joshua, Matthew Lowenstein, Jonathan Roll, Ria Roy and Dian Zhong, alongside the two editors. The book offers practical guidance for anyone who wants to reason with the past more rigorously, with greater humility and closer attention to context and contingency.

About the speakers

Joseph Ledford is Assistant Professor of Security Studies and Director of Research at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. Ledford is also a Griffin Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A historian of US foreign relations, he is the author of a forthcoming book on the Iran-Contra affair and Ronald Reagan’s presidency. In addition to conducting historical research, he frequently provides analysis on US foreign policy for popular and policy outlets. He earned his PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and held the America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Prior to joining UT Austin, he was a Hoover Fellow and the Assistant Director of the Hoover History Lab at the Hoover Institution.

Daniel J. Sargent is the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of American History and Citizenship at the University of California, Berkeley, with appointments in the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department of History. Sargent earned his PhD in history from Harvard University and received his BA with double-first-class honors from Cambridge University. He has held fellowships at Yale University’s International Security Studies program and at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Sargent is the author of A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (Oxford University Press, 2015). He has also written numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, and he coedited The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Harvard University Press, 2010).

Barnabas Szabo (moderator) is Research Associate in History at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He is an alumni of the Ax:son Johnson Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Centre for Geopolitics, where he currently oversees events and communications. He obtained his PhD in Comparative History at Central European University (Budapest/Vienna), after completing graduate programs in International Relations/European Studies and Nationalism Studies.

This book talk is part of Engelsberg Applied History Programme – Axson Johnson Institute (https://axsonjohnsoninstitute.org/applied-history-programme/#:~:text=The%20programme%20selects%20ten%20undergraduate%20students).

The event will be followed by a drinks reception.

Description supplied by the event organiser.