Christopher McKee (born in Brooklyn, New York on 14 June 1935) is an American naval historian, librarian, and educator.
Mckee graduated from the University of St. Thomas in Houston in 1957 and completed his Master of Library Science degree at the University of Michigan in 1960.
McKee has worked at various institutions of higher learning as a librarian, historian, and educator. These institutions include Washington and Lee University (1958-1962), Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (1962-1972), and Grinnell College (1972-2006). McKee also held the Secretary of the Navy Research Chair in Naval History at the Naval Historical Center (1990-1991) and was a NEH fellow at the Newberry Library (1978–79).
McKee has been recognized nationally for his contributions to the study of naval history. Awards include the U.S. Naval History prize (1985) of the John Lyman Book awards of the North American Society for Oceanic History, and the Samuel Eliot Morison Award of the USS Constitution Museum (1993). He was awarded the 2016 Commodore Dudley W. Knox Naval History Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Naval Historical Foundation. [1]
Samuel Eliot Morison was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States naval operations in World War II, which was published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. Morison wrote the popular Oxford History of the American People (1965), and co-authored the classic textbook The Growth of the American Republic (1930) with Henry Steele Commager.
The Naval History and Heritage Command, formerly the Naval Historical Center, is an Echelon II command responsible for the preservation, analysis, and dissemination of U.S. naval history and heritage located at the historic Washington Navy Yard. The NHHC is composed of 42 facilities in 13 geographic locations including the Navy Department Library, 10 museums and 1 heritage center, USS Constitution repair facility and detachment, and historic ship ex-USS Nautilus.
John Brewster Hattendorf, D.Phil., D.Litt., L.H.D., FRHistS, FSNR, is an American naval historian. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than fifty books, mainly on British and American maritime history and naval warfare. In 2005, the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings described him as "one of the most widely known and well-respected naval historians in the world." In reference to his work on the history of naval strategy, an academic in Britain termed him the "doyen of US naval educators." A Dutch scholar went further to say that Hattendorf "may rightly be called one of the most influential maritime historians in the world." From 1984 to 2016, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He has called maritime history "a subject that touches on both the greatest moments of the human spirit as well as on the worst, including war." In 2011, the Naval War College announced the establishment of the Hattendorf Prize for Distinguished Original Research in Maritime History, named for him. The 2014 Oxford Naval Conference - "Strategy and the Sea" - celebrated his distinguished career on April 10–12, 2014. The proceedings of the conference were published as a festschrift. In March 2016, Hattendorf received the higher doctorate of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) from the University of Oxford. Among the few Americans to have received such designation, Hattendorf remained actively engaged on the Naval War College campus after his formal retirement in 2016.
Commodore Dudley Wright Knox was an officer in the United States Navy during the Spanish–American War and World War I. He was also a prominent naval historian, who for many years oversaw the Navy Department's historical office, now named the Naval History and Heritage Command.
The United States Navy Memorial is a memorial in Washington, D.C. honoring those who have served or are currently serving in the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine.
The Naval Historical Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1926, has a broad mission to preserve and promote the naval history of the United States by supporting official Sea Services programs and institutions, meeting the needs of the public for naval history, and collecting historical items. The foundation is located at the Washington Navy Yard, in Washington, D.C.
The USS Constitution Museum is located in the Charlestown Navy Yard, which is part of the Boston National Historical Park in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The museum is situated near the ship USS Constitution at the end of Boston's Freedom Trail. The museum is housed in a restored shipyard building at the foot of Pier 2.
Sir John Knox Laughton was a British naval historian and arguably the first to delineate the importance of the subject of Naval history as an independent field of study. Beginning his working life as a mathematically trained civilian instructor for the Royal Navy, he later became Professor of Modern History at King's College London and a co-founder of the Navy Records Society. A prolific writer of lives, he penned the biographies of more than 900 naval personalities for the Dictionary of National Biography.
The Navy Records Society was established in 1893 as a scholarly text publication society to publish historical documents relating to the history of the Royal Navy. Professor Sir John Knox Laughton and Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge were the key leaders who organized the society, basing it on the model of earlier organisations such as the Hakluyt Society and the Camden Society. The American naval historian, Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, was one of the first overseas members to join the Navy Records Society.
The East Tennessee Historical Society (ETHS), headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of East Tennessee history, the preservation of historically significant artifacts, and educating the citizens of Tennessee. The society operates a museum and museum shop in the East Tennessee History Center on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville. The East Tennessee Historical Society was established in 1834, 38 years after the establishment of the state of Tennessee, to record the history of the development and settlement of the area.
Dr. Dean Conrad Allard, Jr. was a naval historian and archivist, who served as Director of Naval History and Director of the United States Navy's Naval Historical Center from 1989 to 1995.
William Sheldon Dudley is a naval historian of the United States Navy, who served as Director of Naval History and Director, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. from 1995 to 2004.
James D. Hornfischer was an American literary agent and naval historian.
Craig Lee Symonds is the Distinguished Visiting Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History for the academic years 2017–2020 at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He is also Professor Emeritus at the U. S. Naval Academy where he served as chairman of the history department. He is a distinguished historian of the American Civil War and maritime history. His book Lincoln and His Admirals received the Lincoln Prize. His book Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings was the 2015 recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature.
Harold David Langley was an American diplomatic and naval historian who served as associate curator of naval history at the Smithsonian Institution from 1969 to 1996. As a naval historian, he was a pioneer in exploring American naval social and medical history.
David Curtis Skaggs Jr., is an American historian of the Colonial and Early Republic periods, who spent nearly his entire academic career at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.
James Francis McNulty was a U.S Maritime Service (USMS) Rear Admiral, a United States Navy Captain, and an educator of both Naval Officers and Merchant Marine Officers. He began his naval career in 1953 shortly after graduating from Massachusetts Maritime Academy.with a B.S. in Marine Engineering. He served as a Naval Surface Warfare Officer for twenty-two years, which included service as Commanding Officer on destroyers ,lead speechwriter for the Chief of Naval Operations (Zumwalt), and culminated in his final position as Chief of Staff of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He was a veteran of the Korean War and the Vietnam War. and retired from the U.S. Navy in 1977. As a firm believer in "giving back", he went on to serve the next generation as an educator and administrator in the United States Maritime Service, as Academic Dean at Maine Maritime Academy, Head of the Marine Transportation Department at Texas A&M University Maritime Academy, and ultimately as Superintendent of Great Lakes Maritime Academy.
The Royal Naval College, Greenwich, was a Royal Navy training establishment between 1873 and 1998, providing courses for naval officers. It was the home of the Royal Navy's staff college, which provided advanced training for officers. The equivalent in the British Army was the Staff College, Camberley, and the equivalent in the Royal Air Force was the RAF Staff College, Bracknell.
Paul G. Halpern is a retired American educator, naval historian and documentary editor. His primary focus has been the history of the Royal Navy in the period surrounding the First World War and in Naval warfare in the Mediterranean during World War I. In describing his career of achievement in publishing six volumes of edited naval documents, "The Annual Report of the Council of the Navy Records Society" noted in 2016 that "Paul Halpern has served the Society notably". "Those who have edited a similar number are a distinguished group: Sir Julian Corbett, Michael Oppenheim, Professor David Syrett, and J. R. Tanner, while only Sir John Knox Laughton and the Admiralty Librarian David Bonner-Smith have outstripped him."
Thomas Joshua Cutler is a retired United States naval officer, naval historian, author, and editor. He is "one of the most prolific authors in the history of the Naval Institute Press in terms of sold books."