“Chip War,” an Analysis of the Geopolitics of Critical Technology, Wins 2023 Arthur Ross Book Award

Christopher R. Miller has won the 2023 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Arthur Ross Book Award for Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (Scribner), an analysis of the global efforts to control the supply of computer microchips. Miller, an associate professor of international history at Tufts University, was awarded the Gold Medal.

“Chris Miller has done the seemingly impossible—made the global contest for digital infrastructure supremacy accessible, exciting, and fascinating,” said Gideon Rose, CFR’s Mary and David Boies distinguished fellow in U.S. foreign policy and chair of the award jury, which includes CFR members, but reaches its decision independent of the institution.

The jury awarded the Silver Medal to Susan Shirk for Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise (Oxford University Press). Shirk is a research professor and chair of the 21st Century China Center at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego.

The Bronze Medal was awarded to Professor of Economics at the Institute of Political Studies Sergei Guriev and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles Daniel Treisman for Spin Dictator: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press).

Additional shortlist nominees include:  

• Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff for The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (Little, Brown & Company)  
• Professor Emeritus of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies Michael Mandelbaum for The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy: Weak Power, Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower (Oxford University Press)
• Professor and Director of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida William Inboden for The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink (Dutton) 
• Rhodes Professor of American History at the University of Oxford Pekka Hamalainen for Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America (Liveright)

Endowed by the late Arthur Ross in 2001, this award recognizes nonfiction books that make an outstanding contribution to the understanding of international relations, and is among the most prestigious prizes for books related to international and foreign policy issues.

Recent winners include Carter Malkasian’s The American War in Afghanistan: A History, Zachary D. Carter’s The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, and Jill Lepore’s These Truths: A History of the United States. A full list of previous winners is available here.

This year’s awardees will be honored at a CFR event in January 2024.