Greg Grandin
Grandin in a 2020 interview
Born	1962 (age 62–63)
Alma mater	Brooklyn College (BA) Yale University (PhD)
Occupation(s)	Historian, Author, Academic
Employer	Yale University

Greg Grandin (born 1962) is an American historian and author. He is a professor of history atYale University.^[1] He previously taught atNew York University.^[2]

He is author of several books, includingFordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (2010); this book was a finalist for thePulitzer Prize for History, theNational Book Award,^[3] and theNational Book Critics Circle Award.^[4]

A later work,Who is Rigoberta Menchú? (2011), focuses on the treatment of thetitular GuatemalanNobel Peace Prize winner. His book,The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World (2014), is a study of the factual basis for the novellaBenito Cereno byHerman Melville.^[5] In 2025, his bookAmerica, América: A New History of the New World was published. It was shortlisted for theCundill History Prize.^[6]

Grandin'sThe End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (2019) received aPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.^[7]

Grandin received aB.A. fromBrooklyn College in 1992 and aPh.D. from Yale University in 1999.^[8]

He won theLatin American Studies Association's Bryce Wood Award for the best book published in any discipline onLatin America forBlood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation.Eric Hobsbawm calledThe Last Colonial Massacre a "remarkable and extremely well-written work" that

is about more than the dark history of Guatemala and the Cold War in Latin America. It is about how common people discover politics. It is about the roots of democracy and those of genocide. It is about the hopes and defeats of the twentieth-century left. I could not put this book down.^[9]

Grandin has published widely onU.S. foreign policy, theCold War, and Latin American politics inThe Nation,^[10]The New York Times,^[11]Harper's,^[12] and theLondon Review of Books.^[13] He has appeared on theCharlie Rose Show and has interviewedNaomi Klein^[14] andHugo Chávez.^[15]

After the death of Chávez, Grandin published a lengthy obituary inThe Nation, opining that "the biggest problem Venezuela faced during his rule was not that Chávez was authoritarian but that he wasn't authoritarian enough."^[16]

In the summer of 2009, he reported fromHonduras onthat country's coup, appearing numerous times onDemocracy Now!^[17] and Grit TV^[18] and writing a series of reports inThe Nation and elsewhere on the consequences of theoverthrow of Honduran presidentManuel Zelaya.

Grandin worked as a consultant with theHistorical Clarification Commission (Spanish: Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico, or CEH), the Guatemalan truth commission, and has written a number of articles on its methodology, including itsgenocide ruling^[19][20] and its use of historical analysis.^[21]

Grandin was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2010.^[22]

External audio
On This Spanish Slave Ship, Nothing Was As It Seemed, Review ofThe Empire of Necessity, 5:57,Maureen Corrigan,Fresh Air,NPR, January 27, 2014[23]

• The Blood of Guatemala: a History of Race and Nation. Duke University Press. 2000.ISBN 978-0-8223-2495-9.
• The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. University of Chicago Press. 2004.ISBN 978-0-226-30571-4.
• Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. Macmillan. 2007.ISBN 978-0-8050-8323-1.
• Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City. Macmillan. 2010.ISBN 978-0-312-42962-1.
• Who Is Rigoberta Menchu?, Verso, 2011,ISBN 978-1-84467-458-9.
• The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World,Metropolitan Books, 2014,ISBN 9780805094534.^[24]
• Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman, Metropolitan Books, 2015,ISBN 9781627794497.
• "The Strange Career of American Exceptionalism",The Nation, January 2/9, 2017, pp. 22–27.
• The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, Metropolitan Books, 2019,ISBN 9781250179821.
• "Kissinger Still at Large at 100",The Nation, vol. 316, no. 11 (May 29/June 5, 2023), pp. 16–19. "We now know much more about Kissinger's crimes, the immense suffering he caused during his years in public office." (p. 19.)
• America, América: A New History of the New World. Penguin Press. 2025.ISBN 978-0-593-83125-0.^[25]

• Greg Grandin; Thomas Miller Klubock, eds. (2007).Truth Commissions: State Terror, History, and Memory.Duke University Press.ISBN 978-0-8223-6674-4.
• Greg Grandin;Gilbert M. Joseph; Emily S. Rosenberg, eds. (2010).A Century of Revolution. Duke University Press.ISBN 978-0-8223-4737-8.

Fordlandia was named one of the best books of the year byTheNew York Times,^[26]The New Yorker;^[27]NPR;^[28]TheBoston Globe;^[29]San Francisco Chronicle;^[30] and theChicago Tribune.^[31]

In 2020, Grandin was awarded aPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction forThe End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.^[7]

• Greg Grandin websiteArchived April 15, 2010, at theWayback Machine
• Greg Grandin articles forThe Nation'
• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Appearances onDemocracy Now!

• Latin Americanists
• Historians of Latin America
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1962 births
• Living people
• New York University faculty
• Brooklyn College alumni
• Yale University alumni
• The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
• Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction winners
• Bancroft Prize winners

• Articles with short description
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