Bertrand Patenaude on the Baltic Sea

Bert Patenaude, MA ’79, PhD ’87, teaches history and international relations at Stanford, where he has lectured frequently on the history of Central and Eastern Europe, especially the turbulent 20th century. His book, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (Stanford University Press, 2002), won the 2003 Marshall Shulman Book Prize and was made into a documentary film and broadcast in 2011 as part of the award-winning PBS history series American Experience. Bert, who has traveled extensively with Stanford, served as faculty leader for the Dutch Waterways program in 2014 and 2017 and is looking forward to once again traveling by barge, by bicycle and on foot through the Dutch countryside and its urban suburbs. Some of the topics he will discuss with us during this program include the history of the Netherlands as a thriving center of international law and a major hub of international trade; the Netherlands’ rich art heritage, from the Dutch masters to van Gogh to the early-20th-century political cartoonist Louis Raemaekers; and Holland’s iconic windmills, tulips and Delftware.

• Lecturer, history and international relations, Stanford University, since 1991

• Research fellow, Hoover Institution, since 1992

• Instructor, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, 1992–2000

• Recipient, the Rear Admiral John J. Schieffelin Award for Teaching Excellence, Naval Postgraduate School, 1998 and 1999

• Author, Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary (HarperCollins, 2009)

• BA ’77, political science, Boston College

• MA ’79 and PhD ’87, history—both Stanford University