Patrick Vaughan

Patrick Vaughan (born 1965) is an American historian and scholar teaching at the MA program in Transatlantic Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He specializes in the history of the Cold War and America’s use of "soft power" to achieve its foreign policy aims in the 1970s, which helped turn the tide of the Soviet-American conflict.

Early life

Patrick Vaughan was enrolled in Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, California and attended post-secondary instruction at California State University, Chico where he became friend with the NYPD Blue and Prison Break producer Matt Olmstead, who encouraged Patrick to journalistic and academic writing. Patrick Vaughan completed college and pursued graduate education at West Virginia University.

Career

In 1999 Vaughan published an article in the Polish Review examining the role of the Carter administration to deter a potential Soviet invasion of Poland in 1980s. This work won the Southern Historical Association’s John Snell Memorial Award and quickly opened a number of doors for the scholar; among others to Brzezinski’s personal archive at the Library of Congress and a research stay in Poland with the support of the Fulbright Program. In 2003 his work was recognized as "a major contribution to the historiography of the Cold War" by the Polish embassy in Washington D.C.

In May 2010 Patrick Vaughan published the first-ever full, authorized biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski in Polish. An English version of the biography is in preparation.

In 2003 his work on Zbigniew Brzezinski was awarded by the Polish Institute for Arts and Sciences and the Polish Embassy in Washington DC as the top PhD regarding Poland. In 2011 his strategic biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski was nominated for Nagroda Historyczna im. Kazimierza Moczarskiego Award as one of the superior works in Polish contemporary history.

Books

Vaughan, Patrick. Zbigniew Brzeziński. Świat Książki: Warsaw, 2010

External links

• Patrick Vaughan's profile with a photo