Fue autor de obras como The Origin of the Communist Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 1955);[10][11][12] The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Random House, 1960);[13][2] Rationialism and Nationalism in Russian Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Yale University Press, 1967);[14][15] Turgenev: his Life and Times (Oxford University Press, 1978), una biografía del escritor Iván Turguénev;[16] The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Origins of Modern Communism (Basic Books, 1984);[17] o Russian Studies (Viking, 1987), editados por Ellen Dahrendorf;[18][9] entre otras. También fue editor de obras como The USSR and the Future, An Analysis of the New Program of the CPSU (Praeger, 1963);[19] Lenin: The Man, the Theorist, the Leader (Pall Mall Press, 1968), junto a Peter Reddaway;[20] o The Soviet Worker: Illusion and Realities (St. Martin's Press, 1981), junto a Joseph Godson;[21] entre otras.
Briggs, A.; Dressler, A. (octubre de 1961). «The Communist Party of the Soviet Union by Leonard Schapiro». Soviet Studies (Taylor & Francis, Ltd.) 1 (2): 214-223. ISSN0038-5859. JSTOR148987.
Thurston, Bob (1986). «The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Origins of Modern Communism by Leonard Schapiro; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917 by Stephen F. Cohen». Science & Society(en inglés) (Guilford Press) 50 (2): 239-242. ISSN1943-2801. JSTOR40402705.
Waddington, Patrick (1979). «Turgenev: his Life and Times by Leonard Schapiro». New Zealand Slavonic Journal (Australia and New Zealand Slavists’ Association) (1): 82-91. ISSN0028-8683. JSTOR40921103.