This is the home page of Henry Maar. I am a modern US historian specializing in the relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy, and peace and antiwar activism. My teaching and research interests include the history of politics, diplomacy, peace, social movements, the Cold War, popular culture, technology, and the 20th century more broadly. I received my Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara in 2015 and was the Agnese N. Haury Fellow at New York University the following year. I’ve been an instructor in the history departments at UC Santa Barbara and California State University, Northridge and have also taught summer sessions at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
My book, FREEZE! The Grassroots Movement to Halt the Arms Race and End the Cold War, was published through Cornell University Press (January 2022). Drawing on the most recently declassified evidence from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, as well as several other major collections, I argue the often-neglected Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign of the 1980s was more important to the end of the Cold War arms race than Reagan’s military buildup or his own antinuclear instincts. From examining the archives of the Reagan Library, it becomes clear: the Reagan administration took the movement seriously–and so should historians.