William Taubman

William Chase Taubman (born November 13, 1941, in New York City) is an American political scientist. His biography of Nikita Khrushchev won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2004 and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 2003.

He is currently Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science at Amherst College.

Personal life Taubman is the son of Nora Stern, a teacher, and Howard Taubman, who was chief music critic and then chief theater critic for The New York Times in the 1950s and 60s. He is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and received a B.A. from Harvard University in 1962, an M.A. from Columbia University in 1965, a Certificate of the Russian Institute in 1965, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1969.

William Taubman is the brother of diplomatic journalist Philip Taubman.

His wife, Jane A. Taubman, was a professor of Russian, Emerita, at Amherst College.

Taubman was the recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim fellowship.

Selected publications

McNamara at War: A New History, with Philip Taubman (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025). Gorbachev: His Life and Times (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017). Trump and Putin in Historical Perspective: How We Got into the New Cold War, Amherst College A talk by William Taubman, the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science, Emeritus (June 6, 2017) Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (W. W. Norton & Company, 2003). Moscow Spring with Jane Taubman (Summit Books, 1989). Stalin's American Policy: From Entente to Détente to Cold War (W W Norton & Company, 1982). Khrushchev on Khrushchev by Sergei Khrushchev, (editor/translator). (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990)