David Fromkin

David Henry Fromkin (August 27, 1932 – June 11, 2017) was an American historian, best known for his interpretive account of the Middle East, A Peace to End All Peace (1989), in which he recounts the role European powers played between 1914 and 1922 in creating the modern Middle East. The book was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Fromkin wrote seven books, ending in 2007 with The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh, Secret Partners.

Life

Fromkin was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1932.

He died on June 11, 2017, in New York City due to heart failure; he was 84.

Career

A graduate of the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Law School, he was Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations, and Law at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, where he was also the Director of The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Long-Range Future.

Before his career as a historian, Fromkin was an attorney and political adviser. In the 1972 Democratic primary campaign, he served as a foreign-policy adviser to candidate Hubert Humphrey. As an attorney, he served as both prosecutor and defense counsel in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps.

He retired as professor emeritus in 2013.

Assessment

Noam Chomsky criticized Fromkin for his portrayal of the US-backed NATO intervention in the Kosovo War. Discussing Fromkin's book Kosovo Crossing: The Reality of American Intervention in the Balkans, Chomsky stated that Fromkin "asserts without argument that the U.S. and its allies acted out of 'altruism' and 'moral fervor' alone" in bombing Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war.