With McNamara at War: A New History, former New York Times Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman and Pulitzer Prize–winning author William Taubman deliver a captivating and authoritative psychological portrait of Robert S. McNamara. Informed by newly discovered diaries, letters, and interviews with those closest to him, the authors uncover an emotionally tortured man—a man who mastered everything in life, until the Vietnam War mastered him. McNamara at War is the winner of the 2026 New York Historical Zalaznick Book Prize in American History.

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Philip Taubman is affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Philip worked at the New York Times for nearly 30 years, where he served as a Washington correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, deputy editorial page editor, and Washington bureau chief. He is author of In the Nation’s Service: The Life and Times of George P. Shultz, The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb, and Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage.

William Taubman is the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Amherst College. His book, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of Gorbachev: His Life and Times, Moscow Spring, and Stalin’s American Policy: From Entente to Détente to Cold War. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.