Military Historians are People, Too‪!‬ Brian Feltman & Bill Allison

Our guest today is Kansas native-turned-West Texan Kelly Crager. Kelly is Head of the Oral History Project at the Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University, where he is also the Associate Archivist. Before coming to Texas Tech, Kelly was a visiting assistant professor at Texas A&M University. He holds a BA and MA degree in American history from Pittsburg State University and earned his PhD in from the University of North Texas.

Kelly is the author of Hell under the Rising Sun: Texan POWs and the Building of the Burma‐Thailand Death Railway (Texas A&M University Press). His articles have been published in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Military History of the West, and Southwestern Historical Quarterly, and he curated physical and online exhibits on The Tet Offensive and the Helicopter War in Vietnam. His current research focuses on myth and memory in the Vietnam War. Kelly is the Book Review Editor for Military History of the West, an advisor to the Dartmouth Vietnam Project, and has appeared on C-SPAN’s American History TV.

Join us for a relaxed and very interesting chat with Kelly Crager. We'll talk adolescent missteps, working in a hot dog factory, the impact of that special history teacher, doing oral history, George Strait, Shiner Boch Beer, and much more.

Shoutout to Hard Eight BBQ in Stephenville, Texas, and The Shack BBQ in Lubbock!

And a very special shoutout to our listeners - this is our 100th-numbered episode! Congrats to us and to all of you for supporting Military Historians are People, Too!

Special Discount for our listeners from the University Press of Kansas - 30% off any book purchase! Use discount code 24MILPEOPLE at the ⁠UPK website⁠!

Rec.: 03/14/2024

Our guest today is another Napoleonic-era scholar and also prolific podcaster Zack White. Zack is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Centre for Port Cities and Maritime Cultures at the University of Portsmouth. He earned a BA in History from the University of Southampton, a Postgraduate Certificate of Education in Secondary Education and Teaching from the Wessex Schools Training Partnership, and an MA and PhD in History from the University of Southampton. His thesis, “Pragmatism & Discretion: Discipline in the British Army, 1808-1818” was awarded the Wellington Prize in 2022. Zack has experience in the secondary school classroom as well. He taught History and Politics at St. Catherine’s Catholic School in Dorset.

Zack is the editor of the forthcoming An Unavoidable Evil: Siege Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (Helion) and is the editor and presenter of The Napoleonic Wars Podcast, which has over 2,000 weekly listeners in over 100 countries. Zack is the founder and the current Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Romance, Revolution & Reform, serves as the Postgraduate Liaison and Social Media Officer for the British Commission for Military History, and is the creator and editor of the online hub The Napoleonic Wars. He is the founder and chair of the Napoleonic & Revolutionary War Graves Charity, a program dedicated to war graves restoration and burying Napoleonic-era veterans when bodies are disturbed. Zack is currently researching his next project, “Sepoys and Slave Seamen: Race, Empire and the Law in British India, 1795-1830.”

Join us for a really interesting chat with one of the more busy new scholars in the military history community. We'll talk podcasting, air traffic control, Green Day, Wellington, British military justice, violins, and much more!

Special Discount for our listeners from the University Press of Kansas - 30% off any book purchase! Use discount code 24MILPEOPLE at the UPK website!

Rec.: 03/15/2024

Our guest today is Napoleonic-era scholar Luke Reynolds, who is an assistant professor of history at the University of Connecticut at Stamford. He has taught at colleges and universities in greater New York City, including Hunter College and Brooklyn College. Luke holds a BA in history from Trinity College in Dublin, an MA from Hunter College in New York, an MPhil in history from Cambridge, and a PhD from the City University of New York.

Luke's first monograph, Who Owned Waterloo? Battle, Memory, and Myth in British History, 1815-1852 (Oxford University Press), won the Society for Military History 2023 Distinguished Book Award and was a runner-up for the Society for the Society for Army Historical Research's 2023 Best First Book Prize. He has also published in the Journal of Tourism History and the Journal of Victorian Culture. He is currently working on a monograph titled The Complete Battle of Waterloo: All Three Versions of J. H. Amherst's Blockbuster Spectacle.

Luke is a frequent guest on the The Napoleonic Wars Podcast, and is Committee Secretary for the Napoleonic and Revolutionary War Graves Charity. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (huzzah!).

Join us for a fun and interesting chat with Luke Reynolds. We'll talk growing up in New York City, going to school abroad, choosing between theater and history, Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's novels, the Lambs Club, and, of course, "the recent film that shall not be named."

Special Discount for our listeners from the University Press of Kansas - 30% off any book purchase! Use discount code 24MILPEOPLE at the ⁠UPK website⁠!

Rec.: 03/08/2024

Today's special Leap Year guest is World War II social historian and oral history advocate G. Kurt Piehler. Kurt is the Director of the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience at Florida State University. He has held academic appointments at the City University of New York and Drew University, and was the founding director of the Rutgers Oral History Archives and served as Director of the Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Tennessee. He was a Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at Kobe University and Kyoto University and served as a National Historical Publications and Records Commission Fellow in Historical Editing at the Peale Family Papers in the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery (that's a mouthful!). Kurt earned his BA in History at Drew University before taking an MA and PhD at Rutgers.

Kurt is the author of A Religious History of the American GI in World War II (Nebraska), Remembering War the American Way (Smithsonian Institution Press) and World War II (Greenwood), which is part of the American Soldiers' Lives series. He edited the Encyclopedia of Military Science (2013) and The United States in World War II: A Documentary Reader (Wiley-Blackwell). He has co-edited at least five volumes, including the Oxford Handbook of World War II. Kurt is the series editor of Fordham University Press' World War II: The Global, Human, Ethical Dimension series and the Legacies of War series at the University of Tennessee Press. He is on the advisory board of the NEH-funded American Soldier Project at Virginia Tech University (Shoutout to GFOP Ed Gitre!) and a member of the editorial board of the Service Newspapers of World War II digital publication. Kurt is an active member of the Society for Military History, and he organized the 2003 annual meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the 2017 conference in Jacksonville, Florida (seriously, he did that TWICE!).

Join us for a fun and fascinating chat with the very affable Kurt Piehler. We'll talk fun shirts, Fresh Meadows, congressional internships, Pink Martini, oral history and veterans' stories, and John le Carré novels, among many other topics. This is a good one (as they all are!)!

Special Discount for our listeners from the University Press of Kansas - 30% off any book purchase! Use discount code 24MILPEOPLE at the ⁠UPK website⁠!

Rec.: 02/29/2024

Our guest today is a historian of the Civil War, the Vietnam era, and the prisoner-of-war experience - Glenn Robins in Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Georgia. He formerly served as the Director of GSW University, and was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi and spent one year at Brewton-Parker prior to his arrival in Americus. Glenn received his BA from Carson Newman College, an MA from East Tennessee State University, and his PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi. Glenn was a West Point Summer Fellow in 2009.

Glenn is the author of The Longest Rescue: The Life and Legacy of Vietnam POW William A. Robinson (Kentucky), and The Bishop of the Old South: The Ministry and Civil War Legacy of Leonidas Polk (Mercer). He is the editor of They Have Left Us Here to Die: The Civil War Prison Diary of Sgt. Lyle G. Adair, 111th U.S. Colored Infantry (Kent State), which was a finalist for the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award, the co-editor of America and the Vietnam War: Re-Examining the Culture and History of a Generation (Routledge) and co-author with Paul Springer of Transforming Civil War Prisons: Lincoln, Lieber, and the Politics of Captivity (Routledge: 2014). Glenn’s new book, A Debt of Gratitude: How Jimmy Carter put Vietnam Politics on the National Agenda, is forthcoming from the University Press of Kansas.

Join us for a very interesting chat with Glenn Robins. We'll talk chance and circumstance in becoming a historian, working for NASA, POWs, veterans in Congress, the Ford EXP, Eminem, and home-cooked viz retail BBQ!

Rec.: 02/15/2024

Today’s guest is the amazing teacher, Civil War historian, and former Gettysburg battlefield guide Dr. Jennnifer Murray. Jennifer is a teaching associate professor of history at Oklahoma State University and was formerly an assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia at Wise and served as a historian in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Jennifer was also, for several summers, a seasonal ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park and has led hundreds of battlefield tours. She earned a BS at Frostburg State University and an MA from James Madison University before being awarded a PhD from Auburn University.

Jennifer is the author of On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933–2013 (Tennessee), which won the Bachelder-Coddington Award in 2014, and The Civil War Begins: Opening Clashes, 1861, which is part of the US Army Center of Military History’s Campaign Series. Her current book project is a biography of General George Gordon Meade. Jennifer has participated in dozens of Civil War Roundtables and has been featured on C-SPAN and NPR. She also consulted for “Who Do You Think You Are?” Jennifer is a member of the editorial board of Kent State University Press’ Interpreting the Civil War: Texts and Contexts Series and formerly served in the same capacity at Gettysburg Magazine.

Join us for a fun and interesting chat with Jennnifer Murray. We’ll talk Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, “Stump the Ranger,” college softball, Mrs. Maisel, and writing a massive biography of an often underrated Civil War general.

Content warning: Brian reveals he has attended a Billy Joel concert!

Shoutout to Wright’s BBQ in Johnson, Arkansas!

Rec.: 02/16/2024