Benjamin Nathans ’79 Wins Pulitzer

Category:

Benjamin Nathans ’79, a professor of history at University of Pennsylvania, won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction on Monday. The award recognized Nathans’ latest work, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, which explores dissent in the Soviet Union from Stalin’s death to the collapse of communism.

Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term professor of history at Penn and teaches imperial Russian and Soviet history, modern Jewish history, and the history of human rights. His book was described by The Pulitzer committee as “prodigiously researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent,” adding that it is “populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights.”

Nathans is also the author of Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. He is co-editor of Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe and From Europe’s East to the Middle East: Israel’s Russian and Polish Lineages. After graduating from Park, Nathans went on to earn his B.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Back to The Latest

Share

Related Posts

Award-Winning Author Adam Gidwitz ’00 Visits Park

We were excited to welcome author and alumnus Adam Gidwitz ’00 back to campus last week. Adam met with our entire second and fifth grades to share stories and answer...

Park Welcomes New York Times Reporters Annie Karni ’00 and Luke Broadwater to Campus

New York Times Congressional Correspondent Annie Karni ’00 and White House reporter Luke Broadwater joined the Upper School yesterday for an assembly to talk about their new book Mad House,...

Award-Winning Author Ruth Franklin ’91 Publishes New Book about Anne Frank

Book critic, award-winning author, and former editor at The New Republic, alumna Ruth Franklin ’91 has a new book out chronicling Anne Frank’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World...