Bob Neer

Bob Neer studies the history of the United States in the context of globalization, with a special focus on U.S. military power. Napalm, An American Biography, the first history of the incendiary weapon, will be published in 2013 by the Belknap Press imprint of Harvard University Press. His current research project is a global history of the U.S. military.

Dr. Neer has taught Contemporary Civilization, the year-long Core Curriculum political philosophy survey seminar from Plato to Nietzsche, on and off since 2006. In the summer of 2012 he taught "Empire of Liberty: A Global History of the U.S. Military," to graduate and undergraduate students in Columbia's summer program. He has spoken at numerous conferences and delivered guest lectures on doing business in Asia to classes at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and on American popular culture at Hong Kong University.

He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 2011, a Columbia M.Phil in 2007, and J.D. and M.A. degrees from the university in 1991.  After 1991, he took a 14-year leave of absence to work in international business and politics. He started, developed and sold media and entertainment firms in London, Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong and Boston. He is the author of Barack Obama for Beginners, published in 2008, the best-selling title in the 24-year history of For Beginners books, and has written articles for The Boston Globe, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals. He is a co-founder and editor of BlueMassGroup.com, the most widely read independent political blog in New England with approximately 1.25 million unique annual readers. He studied Southeast Asian politics as a Fulbright scholar at the National University of Singapore in 1987, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1986.