Indispensable Reading

Wm. Roger Louis is the Kerr Professor of English History and Culture and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. An Honorary Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, he is a past President of the American Historical Association and a former chairman of the U.S. State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee. He held the Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress (2010) and delivered the Bancroft Lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy in 2015. He is the founder of the British Studies Seminar at the University of Texas (1975–), where in 2009 he was chosen Professor of the Year by the 50,000-member student body. His books include Imperialism at Bay, 1977, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1984, and Ends of British Imperialism, 2006. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the five-volume Oxford History of the British Empire (1998–99) and its Companion series (2004–). In 1999, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He has edited some 30 books, including the third volume of The History of Oxford University Press. In 2013, he was awarded the Benson Medal of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2014 he received a Certificate in Arabic after intensive study in Oman; and in 2016 he delivered the Chaim Weizmann Memorial Lecture in the Humanities in Israel.