Roger J. Spiller

Roger J. Spiller retired as the George C. Marshall Distinguished Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is the first George C. Marshall Distinguished Professor of History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Spiller is a noted author and editor who recently wrote In the School of War, released in 2010.

Articles by this Author

World War II 1941 To 1945, November/December 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 6

World War II General, October 2002 | Vol. 53, No. 5

Our Chances Of A Happier Ending, November/December 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 8

A War Against History, February/March 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 1

It's the tenth anniversary of the Gulf War. America certainly didn't lose, but what else do we know about it?

War In The Dark, February/March 1999 | Vol. 50, No. 1

Why World War II is so difficult to get right on the screen—and the movies that do it best

General, May/June 1998 | Vol. 49, No. 3

“Hope Is Not A Method”, December 1993 | Vol. 44, No. 8

The general responsible for remaking the American Army in the aftermath of the Cold War knows a great deal of history, and it sustains him in a very tough job.

Honoring The Buffalo Soldiers, February/March 1992 | Vol. 43, No. 1

When Colin Powell noticed a couple of alleys named for the 9th and 10th Cavalries, he thought these black regiments deserved a better memorial

My Guns, December 1991 | Vol. 42, No. 8

A MEMOIR OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR Seeking the answer to a simple and terrible question: What was it like?

Shellshock, May/June 1990 | Vol. 41, No. 4

“Combat fatigue” and “post-Vietnam syndrome” lost ground to a more sophisticated understanding of the problem of PTSD.

The Real War, November 1989 | Vol. 40, No. 7

Walt Whitman said, “The real war will never get in the books.” The critic and writer Paul Fussell feels that the same sanitizing of history that went on after the 1860s has erased the national memory of what World War II was really like.

Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brinkley, Douglas

Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books, most recently The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper 2009) and The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins 2007). Brinkley earned his B.A from Ohio State University University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989.