Spencer C. Tucker

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Spencer Coakley Tucker (born September 20, 1937 in Buffalo , New York ) is an American military historian . He is a retired professor from Texas Christian University and the Virginia Military Institute .

Life

Tucker, the son of an Army officer, received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Virginia Military Institute in 1959 . With a Fulbright scholarship , he studied at the University of Bordeaux in 1959/60 . He then obtained his master's degree in 1962 and his Ph.D. in 1966. in Modern European History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill .

For the next two years - during the height of the Vietnam War - he served with the rank of captain in the US Army intelligence service .

From 1967 to 1997 he worked at Texas Christian University and rose in these thirty years from assistant professor to full professor and finally to head of the history department. He then moved to the Virginia Military Institute, where he received the John Biggs Chair in Military History . In 2003 he retired as a university lecturer, but remained very active as an author and editor of military history publications and as a consultant for specialist publishers.

Spencer C. Tucker is married to the psychotherapist Beverly Tucker (née Blount) for the second time.

Research and Works

Tucker's research interests are American naval history and the civil war . He received the Rear Admiral Ernest M. Eller Naval History Prize in 2000 and the Matthew Fontaine Maury Research Award in 2002 . His book " Stephen Decatur : A Life Most Bold and Daring" was awarded the 2004 Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize in Naval History . For his works "Arming the Fleet: US Navy Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era" and " Andrew Foote : Civil War Admiral on Western Waters" he received the John Lyman Book Award of the North American Society for Oceanic History in 1989 and 2000 . The Society for Military History awarded him three book awards (2008 for “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War” , 2010 for “The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars” and 2014 for “American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection " ).

Tucker has published over 60 books during his career as a writer and editor. In addition to the naval and civil war topics already mentioned, these include many encyclopedias that each deal with a specific war ( "The Encyclopedia of World War II" , "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War" ), works on specific weapon systems (the series "Weapons and Warfare:" An Illustrated History of Their Impact ” ) and works on military leadership ( “ US Leadership in Wartime: Clashes, Controversy, and Compromise ” ). He also oversees the publication of the Indiana University Press series Twentieth-Century Battles , the work of which depicts major military operations of the 20th century.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tucker, Spencer C. 1937- (Spencer Tucker, Spencer Coakley Tucker) . Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, January 2009, HighBeam Research ( Memento from September 6, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Spencer C. Tucker (Ed.): US Leadership in Wartime: Clashes, Controversy, and Compromise , Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2009, p. Vii ("About the Editor")
  3. ^ Indiana University Press: Twentieth-Century Battles
personal data
SURNAME Tucker, Spencer C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tucker, Spencer Coakley (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American military historian, university professor, and editor
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Buffalo , New York