John Lewis Gaddis Tells the NYT What He’s Reading Now

The historian John Lewis Gaddis, whose new book is “On Grand Strategy,” finds train videos relaxing: “I especially recommend the six-hour run from Omsk to Novosibirsk, on which nothing happens.”

What books are on your nightstand?

I don’t have a nightstand. I have an iPad holder with all the books I’m reading on the device. Most recently: Sarah Ruden’s translation of Augustine’s “Confessions”; “A Gentleman in Moscow,” by Amor Towles; “Why Bob Dylan Matters,” by Richard F. Thomas; “Call Me by Your Name,” by André Aciman; “On Trails: An Exploration,” by Robert Moor; and “Melbourne,” by David Cecil. ...

Which books by contemporary historians — both academic and amateur — do you most admire?

Stephen Kotkin’s two volumes on Stalin, with one still to come. I’ve read every line and have had to repeatedly reconsider what I thought I knew. Stalin is still a monster, but a far more intriguing one than I had ever suspected.

You have been called the “dean of Cold War historians.” Besides your own, what books (fiction or nonfiction) best capture the Cold War? Have any books on the subject caused you to change your views?

That title originated as a prank by an evil colleague and is the only deanship I haven’t managed to dodge. The best overall book now is Odd Arne Westad’s “The Cold War: A World History.” But anyone working on that topic — or any other in recent history — should be prepared to rethink as new sources appear. I once wrote a book on my own rethinking (“We Now Know”), but found that it made graduate students and international relations theorists nervous. So I’ve tried since to be a bit more discreet. ...

Whom would you want to write your biography?

The first Yale student to get into my voluminously indiscreet diary when it’s opened for research a hundred or so years from now.