Military History in the Academy and in Public

(Austerlitz)

I am pleased to note that there is a very well-done piece by John Lynn at the NAS website, entitled “Breaching the Walls of Academe: The Purposes, Problems, and Prospects of Military History.”  Lynn is currently professor of history at the University of Illinois, Urbana.  He served as president of the United States Commission on Military History from 2003 to 2007 and as vice-president of the Society for Military History from 2005 to 2007. His latest book is Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

In the piece, Lynn considers “again the fate of military history in American academe.”

Very well worth reading…he does a nice job differentiating the (as he sees it) different genres of military history: popular, applied, and academic.