Spencer C. Tucker | |
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Born | Spencer Coakley Tucker September 20, 1937 [1] Buffalo, New York [1] |
Alma mater | Virginia Military Institute University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (M.A., Ph.D.) |
Notable works | The American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection. 6 vols.; Stephen Decatur: A Life Most Bold and Daring. |
Spouse | Beverly Blount [1] |
Spencer C. Tucker is an American historian who was a Fulbright scholar, retired university professor, and author of works on military history. He taught history at Texas Christian University for 30 years and held the John Biggs Chair of Military History at the Virginia Military Institute for six years.
Tucker graduated from the Virginia Military Institute, earning a B.A. in 1959. [1] [2] He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship, which he used to study at the University of Bordeaux, France from 1959 to 1960. [1] Tucker went on to earn a master's degree (1962) and a doctorate degree (1966) in modern European history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [1] [2] From 1965 to 1967, during the Vietnam War era, [3] Tucker was a captain in the U.S. Army and served as an intelligence analyst in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence at The Pentagon. [1] [2] [3]
Tucker taught history at Texas Christian University from 1967 to 1997. [1] [4] From 1992 through his departure in 1997, he was chairman of the department. [1] [5] Tucker then went on to hold the John Biggs Chair in Military History at the Virginia Military Institute from 1997 to 2003 [4] [6] before he retired from teaching. As a VMI full professor, Tucker was a colonel in the Virginia Militia Unorganized. [7] Tucker is now the Senior Fellow in Military History for ABC-CLIO. [8] He was also editor of a series of monographs on decisive battles of the twentieth century for Indiana University Press, with 25 books in the series published.
Tucker was an active member of the Society for Military History and the North American Society for Oceanic History for years. [5] [9] [10] In World War II: The Definitive Encyclopedia, Tucker estimates that the death toll may have reached a hundred million. [11]
Tucker, an author on military and naval history, has written or edited as of June 2021 a total of 70 books in those subject areas. [4] Tucker's biography of Stephen Decatur, Jr., Stephen Decatur: A Life Most Bold and Daring, won the Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt Prize for best book in naval history in 2004. Tucker has received two John Lyman Book Awards from the North American Society for Oceanic History: in 1989, for Arming the Fleet, and 2000, for Andrew Foote: Civil War Admiral on Western Waters. He has won the Society for Military History award for best reference work three times, the most times that it has been presented to any author! for his Encyclopedia of the Cold War in 2008, the Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars in 2010, and The American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection (2014). The last work was also recognized with the 2014 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award, Reference. Many of his encyclopedias have also been recognized with awards by Booklist and by the Reference and User Association of the American Library Association. The American Revolutionary War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection won both the 2018 Outstanding Reference Source award of the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association and the Distinguished Writing Award for Research by the Army Historical Foundation. World War I: A Country-by-Country Guide was awarded Honorable Mention for the Norman B. Tomlinson Prize for the best historical work published in English in 2019, by the World War One Historical Association. The Cold War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection was awarded the Dartmouth Medal by the American Library Association for the outstanding reference work published in 2020.
Tucker lives in Lexington, Virginia with his wife, Dr. Beverly Tucker, also an author, and their dachshund, Sophie.
Books written and edited by Spencer Tucker:
Franklin Buchanan was an officer in the United States Navy who became the only full admiral in the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War. He also commanded the ironclad CSS Virginia.
Paul Prosper Henrys was a French general.
Henning Rudolf Adolf Karl von Holtzendorff was a German admiral during World War I, who became famous for his December 1916 memo about unrestricted submarine warfare against the United Kingdom. He was a recipient of Order of the Black Eagle and the Pour le Mérite with oak leaves and was one of just six Grand Admirals of the Imperial German Navy.
The Battle of Muret, fought on 12 September 1213 near Muret, 25 km south of Toulouse, was the last major battle of the Albigensian Crusade and one of the most notable pitched battles of the Middle Ages. Although estimates of the sizes of the respective armies vary considerably even among distinguished modern historians, it is most well known for a small force of French knights and crusaders commanded by Simon de Montfort the Elder defeating a much larger allied army led by King Peter II of Aragon and Count Raymond VI of Toulouse.
Hajime Sugiyama was a Japanese field marshal and one of Japan's military leaders for most of the Second World War.
Hugh Weedon Mercer was an officer in the United States Army and then a Confederate general during the American Civil War.
The Southern Cross of Honor was a commemorative medal established in 1899 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to honor Confederate veterans.
The Society for Military History is a United States–based international organization of scholars who research, write, and teach military history of all time periods and places. It includes naval history, air power history, and studies of technology, ideas, and homefronts. It publishes the quarterly refereed The Journal of Military History.
The Confederate Medal of Honor is a posthumous award created by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) in 1977 to recognize Confederate veterans who "distinguished themselves conspicuously by gallantry, bravery, and intrepidity at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty" during the American Civil War.
Archibald Campbell Godwin, a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army who was killed at the Battle of Opequon during the American Civil War. Due to his death soon after his appointment, the Confederate Senate never confirmed Godwin's promotion to the grade of brigadier general.
George Foster Shepley was an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, military governor of Louisiana and a United States circuit judge of the United States Circuit Courts for the First Circuit.
János Vörös was a Hungarian military officer and politician who served as Minister of Defence in the unofficial Interim National Government which led by Béla Miklós. He fought in the First World War at the Eastern Front and the Italian Campaign. He was appointed as Chief of Army Staff on 19 March 1944, when the Nazis occupied Hungary. Later Vörös joined the Red Army which arrived at Hungary's eastern border.
Paul J. Springer is an American author, professor, and military historian.
This is a bibliography of works on the military history of the United States.
The Minerva armoured car was a military armoured car expediently developed by Minerva civilian automobiles in Belgium at the start of the First World War.
On 8 January 1916 the Russian dreadnought Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya and the Ottoman battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim encountered one another in the Black Sea. After a brief exchange of fire the Ottomans withdrew.
David T. Zabecki is an American military historian, author and editor. Zabecki served in the U.S. Army both in the Vietnam War and in United States Army Europe in Germany attaining the rank of major general. Zabecki holds PhDs in engineering and in military science. He is the author, editor and translator of several books on the military history of Germany, including World War I and World War II.
The New Market Cross of Honor was a commemorative medal established in 1904 by the Virginia Military Institute Alumni Association (VMIAA) to honor Confederate veterans who served in the Virginia Military Institute Corps of Cadets at the Battle of New Market during the American Civil War.