De Silva has written/edited numerous books during his long career. •
History of Ceylon: Volume I Part 1 (1959, Ceylon University Press) •
History of Ceylon: Volume I Part 2 From the Earliest Times to 1505 (1960, Ceylon University Press) •
Social Policy and Missionary Organizations in Ceylon 1840-1855 (1965, Longmans, Green & Co.) •
History of Ceylon: Volume III From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948 (1973, University of Ceylon, editor) •
A History of Sri Lanka (1981, University of California Press) •
Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-Ethnic Societies: Sri Lanka, 1880-1985 (1986, University Press of America,) •
Religion, Nationalism, and the State in Modern Sri Lanka (1986, University of South Florida) •
Internationalization of Ethnic Conflict (1991, Pinter, co-author Ronald James May) •
Peace Accords and Ethnic Conflict (1993, Pinter, co-author S. W. R. De A. Samarasinghe) •
J. R. Jayewardene of Sri Lanka: a Political Biography (1994, University of Hawaii Press, co-author
William Howard Wriggins) •
J. R. Jayewardene of Sri Lanka: 1906-1956 (1994, University of Hawaii Press, co-author
William Howard Wriggins) •
Regional powers and small state security: India and Sri Lanka, 1977-1990 (1995, Woodrow Wilson Center Press) •
Reaping the Whirlwind: Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic Politics in Sri Lanka (1998, Penguin) •
Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE (2012, Penguin) •
Ethnic Conflict in Buddhist Societies in South and Southeast Asia: The Politics Behind Religious Rivalries (2015, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka, editor) •
The Making of a Historian: A Memoir (2017) •
The Island Story: A Short History of Sri Lanka (2017) ==References==