Hoover fellow Robert Conquest is the 2001 recipient of the W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell Uncommon Book Award for his book Reflections on a Ravaged Century, published by W.W. Norton & Company.
"The prize was given to my most uncommon book. This book delivers a great deal of truth," said Conquest, adding, "Hoover is still fighting a big academic battle [for truth]. It's not over yet."
In Reflections on a Ravaged Century, Conquest examines the nature, strengths, and weaknesses of the open society and the long struggle waged against it by such rogue ideologies as Marxism and national socialism. He looks at the Soviet record, Western misunderstanding of it, and the long confrontation of the cold war. Conquest warns that "the power of fanaticism and of misunderstanding is by no means extinct" and that the twentieth century will be a prelude to even greater evils unless intellectuals engage in "a careful consideration of what needs to be learned, and unlearned."
Conquest is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and curator of the Russian/CIS Collection of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.
The W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell Uncommon Book Award is presented annually to an author affiliated with the Hoover Institution whose work is selected by a panel of Hoover fellows. The award is given for a published book or other significant work on a public policy issue that, in the panel's determination, meets the highest standards of scholarship at the Hoover Institution.
The award was established with a gift from Hoover director emeritus W. Glenn Campbell, who died on November 24, and Hoover senior fellow Rita Ricardo-Campbell. Campbell directed the Hoover Institution from 1960 to September 1989.
"During our period at the Hoover Institution, many uncommonly good scholars were appointed," the Campbells said upon establishing the award. "It seemed to us that it was appropriate that we set up an 'uncommon book' award with the judges being some of the most distinguished scholars appointed during our tenure."
The Hoover Institution, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the 31st president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic public policy and international affairs.
