His most recent book is The Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case for Complacency, published in 2021 by Cambridge University Press. A leading expert on terrorism and particularly on the reactions (or over‐reactions) it often inspires, he is the coauthor (with Mark G. Stewart) of Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism, published by Oxford University Press in 2016. Their Terror, Security and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security was published in 2011 by Oxford. Other books from Mueller include Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them (Free Press, 2006) and Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al‐Qaeda (Oxford, 2010). He is also the editor of Terrorism Since 9/11: The American Cases (Mershon Center, Ohio State, 2015) and (with Christopher A. Preble) A Dangerous World? Threat Perception and U.S. National Security (Cato, 2014).
Mueller is also the author of a multiple prize‐winning book analyzing public opinion during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, War, Presidents and Public Opinion, and of Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War, which deals with changing attitudes toward war. Mueller’s book about international and civil wars, The Remnants of War (Cornell University Press, 2004), was awarded the Lepgold Prize for the best book on international relations in 2004. Mueller has published scores of articles in such publications as International Security, American Political Science Review, American Interest, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Security Studies, Orbis, American Journal of Political Science, Risk Analysis, National Interest, and Foreign Affairs, as well as many opinion pieces. He has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received several teaching prizes.