For four decades Brent Scowcroft has exerted a quiet, continued, and sometimes great influence over the conduct of US national security policy. Drawing on his new biography, The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security, Bartholomew Sparrow discusses how Scowcroft rose to become national security advisor under presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. He explores those occasions when Scowcroft’s voice particularly mattered, and addresses the relevance of his life and career to policymakers today.

Bartholomew Sparrow is a professor of Government at the University of Texas. He is the author of From the Outside In: World War II and the American State, The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire, and Uncertain Guardians: The News Media as a Political Institution. Sparrow has been a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow and a Joan Shorenstein Center Fellow, and is the recipient of the Leonard D. White Award and the Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the American Political Science Association.

The Washington History Seminar is sponsored jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. See www.wilsoncenter.org/collection/washington-history-seminar for the schedule, speakers, topics, and dates as well as webcasts and podcasts. The seminar thanks the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for its support.