Peter Stansky is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus at Stanford University. He has published extensively on the cultural, political, and literary milieu of twentieth-century Britain, including (with William Abrahams) the Orwell biographies The Unknown Orwell (1972) and Orwell: The Transformation (1980), both finalists for the National Book Award.
"""A veteran Orwell scholar, Stansky provides a sketch of his subject's formative experiences before, during, and after some of the most seismic convulsions of the past century.... He makes an admirable attempt to present the real Orwell in all his seeming contradictions, a socialist who loved his capitalist homeland, a decent man who came to see the necessity of war, and a leftist who reviled communist tyranny.""—Michael Washburn, The National Review ""The evolution of the English writer George Orwell's thinking about war is instructive. In this slim and readable volume, Stansky considers how four wars transformed Orwell's worldview.""—Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs ""The Socialist Patriot is a considered analysis of the role of war in the development of Orwell's thinking, notably his sudden shifts from one ideological position to its polar opposite. In its text, as in its title, it captures what would be the two constants informing Orwell's engagement with the momentous events of his time.""—Martin Tyrell, Dublin Review of Books ""The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War is a book that scholars of Orwell will greatly appreciate, as it allows them to see how Orwell became the literary titan that has dominated modern thinking since the late 1940s and early 1950s.""—Margaret Sankey Air, H-War"