Topic: Max Boot

Max Boot (born 1969 in Moscow, Russia) is a American author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He has been a prominent advocate for an actively engaged defense and foreign policy, once describing his own position as support for the use of "American might to promote American ideals" throughout the world. He self-identifies as a political conservative, once joking that "I grew up in the 1980s, when conservatism was cool".

Boot's parents, both of them Russian Jews, emigrated from the Soviet Union to Los Angeles, where he was raised. Boot earned a Bachelor's Degree in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991, and a Master's Degree in Diplomatic History from Yale University in 1992. He started his journalistic career writing columns for the Berkley student newspaper The Daily Californian. He later stated that he believes he is the only conservative writer in that paper's history. Boot and his family currently live in New York City.

Boot is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and a regular contributor to other publications such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. He is also a consultant to the U.S. military and a regular lecturer at U.S. military institutions such as the Army War College and the Command and General Staff College. He has previously worked at the editorial boards of The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor.