Professor Blanche Wiesen Cook Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Dr. Blanche Wiesen Cook, distinguished professor emerita, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and 60 other scholar-patriots, the Academy recognizes individuals for their exceptional achievement and includes Alexander Hamilton, Margaret Mead, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Waldo Emerson, Martha Graham, Georgia O’Keeffe, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright. 

Cook’s definitive biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt appeared on best-seller lists and received several honors. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol I, was on The New York Times bestseller list and won the 1992 Biography Prize from the Los Angeles Times and the Lambda Literary Award, among others. Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume II was also on The New York Times bestseller list and Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol III was named a New York Times notable book of 2016 and one of NPR’s 10 Best Books of 2016. Cook’s other books include The Declassified Eisenhower, which was a New York Times Book Review notable book of 1981, and Crystal Eastman on Women & Revolution. 

For more than twenty years, Cook produced and hosted Activists and Agitators (later called Women and the World) on Radio Pacifica and she has appeared frequently on television programs including The Today Show, Good Morning America, Booknotes and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Cook also served as vice president for research of the American Historical Association and vice president and chair of the Fund for Open Information and Accountability, and she co-founded the Freedom of Information and Access Committee of the Organization of American Historians. Find her full biography here.

Cook will be inducted into the Academy at a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts in October 2025.