Military history has been my passion since childhood. In fact, the first story I remember reading, after getting past “See Jane run. Run Jane run”, was about the Spartans at Thermopylae. Eventually that interest translated into a military career as an infantry officer with twenty-five years’ service in the Army’s active and reserve forces.

After active duty I spent a number of years in the business wilderness, before my office on the 82nd floor of Tower Two collapsed on 9-11. Looking back on events after that everything seems to have taken place at whirlwind pace, as I gave up on trying to be a Wall Street capitalist and launched a career as a writer and historian.

My first stop was the newspapers, and the New York Post and New York Sun were kind enough to offer me my own column. That went one for about a year, where I learned a lot about the difficulties of plugging-out a new and interesting 800-words every week… for two different papers.

But, as the march toward war with Iraq was heating up, I wheedled my way into a job with Time Magazine as an embedded journalist. I embedded with the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne division, in which, as luck would have it, I had commanded a company a dozen-years before. If any of you are interested in my final reflections on the early weeks of the war in Iraq go here.

Upon returning to Iraq, I set out to write a book about the invasion – Takedown. This led me to the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and a new job as a think-tank analyst for the next six years. The work was fascinating, and IDA supported my finally getting my PhD in history.

My PhD was all of eight-days old when the Marine Corps War College risked hiring me. That seems to have worked out for both of us, and I am rapidly closing in on a decade at this great institution. I absolutely love teaching strategy and military history to thirty new students a year, and hugely appreciate the time the school allows me to research and write.

On a more personal level, I am married to a wonderful woman (Sharon), who is an excellent historian in her own right. I have two great kids – adults now – from a first marriage (Allison and James), along with a passel of step-children (Edmund, Anastasia, Adam, and Ethan). There is also a dog and Sharon informs me that we will soon have chickens.