[4] Es padre del también historiador Daniel Pipes, nacido en 1949.
[5] Publicó diversos trabajos sobre la historia de Rusia.
[8] Ha sido adscrito a una posición «conservadora»[6] o «neoconservadora».
Petersburg Labor Movement, 1885-1897 (Harvard University Press, 1963),[10][11] Struve, Liberal on the Left, 1870-1905 (Harvard University Press, 1970),[12][13][14] Russia under the Old Regime (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974),[15] Soviet Strategy in Europe (Crane, Russak & Company, 1976),[16] Struve: Liberal on the Right, 1905-1944 (Harvard University Press, 1980),[17] Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America's Future (1984),[18] Russia Observed: Collected Essays on Russian and Soviet History (Westview Press, 1989),[19] The Russian Revolution (1990),[20][21][7] Communism: The Vanished Specter (1994),[22] A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (1995),[23] Three "Whys" of the Russian Revolution (1997),[24] Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger (2004),[3] The Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia (2003),[25][a] o Russian Conservatism and Its Critics (2006),[27] entre otras.
También ha sido editor de The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archives (Yale University Press, 1996).