Brinkley's scholarship has focused mainly on the period of the Great Depression and World War II. Among his books are "Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression" (1983), which won the National Book Award; ' (1995); "Liberalism and its Discontents" (1998); and ' (2010), which won the Ambassador Book Prize and the Sperber Prize, as well as being a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of two short biographies: "Franklin D. Roosevelt" (2009) and "John F. Kennedy" (2012).