Noted diplomatic historian Frank Costigliola of the University of Connecticut has been selected to edit the diaries of George F. Kennan, the renowned 20^th century diplomat, historian, and public intellectual. Professor Costigliola holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University and is the author of the forthcoming Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War (Princeton University Press, January 2012), in addition to two other books and more than two dozen articles, including an essay on Kennan that appeared in The Journal of American History. He is also a past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEH, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Costigliola’s was one of nine submissions received for the project which was announced last December with ads in the New York Review of Books and The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as on numerous listservs, and the Mudd Manuscript Library blog. He plans a single volume of approximately 600-700 pages and projects a completion date of December 2014. (See Costigliola’s proposal .) Notified of the selection, Costigliola commented, “I am honored by the opportunity to make available to Kennan buffs, scholars of U.S. and international history, and general readers the magnificent, 80-year-long chronicle of this most gifted diplomat, public intellectual, and writer.”

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 2014: This book has been published by Norton, a full ten months ahead of Costigliola’s original projection. We are very pleased to see Mr. Kennan’s diary printed in a handsome and well-edited volume.