Overview
I specialize in the industrialized total wars of the 20th century and the asymmetric responses (guerrilla warfare, insurgency, and terrorism) to those wars that evolved after 1945. I have written books on the British Army in World War I, the Philippine-American War, the Boxer Rebellion in China, and American military encounters with other cultures.
I'm the series editor for Cornell University Press' Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History
Research Focus
Military History and Policy
Publications
This year:
From me: David Silbey and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, eds., Wars Civil and Great: The American Experience in the Civil War and the Great War (Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press, 2023)
From Battlegrounds: Marion Girard Dorsey, Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023).
Battlegrounds, awards: The Yad Vashem Prize for Holocaust History to Edward B. Westermann, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021).
In the news
- Western weapons won't decide war in Ukraine
- Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling like ‘cocking a gun in an old western movie’
- Iranian strike against Israel seemed more spectacle than attack, says prof.
- Ukraine’s mobilization bill sign of ‘desperation’ and ‘rationalization’
- Zaluzhny firing ‘sign of desperation more than calculation’
- Iran has little incentive to dissuade proxy attacks against US troops
- Without aid, Ukraine’s ability to continue fighting ‘deeply in question’
- U.S.-supplied, long-range missiles of ‘limited utility’ for Ukraine
- Kim Jong-un ‘taking advantage’ of Russian need for artillery shells
- If verified, drone strike against Putin could be a significant turning point
- 'Parking missile subs in South Korea creates multiple risk scenarios'
- Intelligence leak creates significant problems on and off the battlefield
- Russia’s quest for Bahkmut could lead to greater losses elsewhere
- After one year of war, how to break the stalemate in Ukraine?
- Germany weighing decision to deliver modern battlefield tanks to Ukraine
- Mikhail Gorbachev, dead at 91, ‘likely haunts Putin’s dreams’
- U.S. information warfare ‘fundamentally shapes conflict’ in Ukraine
- China must protect own interests in decision to provide Russia aid
- Kabul bombings indicate fragile American position in Afghanistan
- Boots in the books: Veterans succeed at academic prep camp
- Undergrad summer course to examine COVID-19 impacts
- A&S Dean Ray Jayawardhana to lead Argentine study tour to see eclipse
