A specialist in 20th-century U.S. foreign relations, his 2003 book, Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign against the Germans of Latin America in World War II, won the Herbert Hoover Book Prize in U.S. History and the A.B. Thomas Book Award in Latin American Studies. He graduated from Oberlin College and U.C. Berkeley, and his many honors include a Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellowship.