Led by Prof. Craig Symonds (US Naval Academy)
Course Number: forthcoming
Semesters: Fall 2025
Image: “6. Landing at Inchon,” Fight the Red Menace: The Children’s Crusade Against Communism trading cards, Bowman Gum Company, Philadelphia, PA, 1951. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC09627.06.01)
This course will examine twelve military engagements—on both land and sea—that had a major impact on the course of American history. Chronologically, it will cover the entire history of the United States, from the Battle of Saratoga during the American Revolution to Desert Storm in 1991. The goal is to illuminate not only what happened in each case and describe and explain the outcome, but also to understand why that particular engagement had a disproportionate impact on American history. We will examine what happened, try to explain why it happened, delineate the roles of the principal decision makers from presidents to petty officers, and discover the main reason why the battle unfolded the way it did. The purpose of the course is to look not only at the biggest battles, but at those battles that moved history, and it is not merely to describe military engagements but also to explain them in political and cultural terms as well as in military terms.
Coming soon
Craig L. Symonds, Professor Emeritus of History, United States Naval Academy
Craig L. Symonds is professor emeritus of history at the United States Naval Academy, where he taught for thirty years. He was the first person to win both the academy’s Teacher of the Year award (1988) and its Researcher of the Year award (1998). In 1994–1995, he was professor of strategy at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England. From 2017 to 2020 he was the Ernest J. King Distinguished Professor of Maritime History at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, for which he received his fourth Superior Civilian Service Medal (2020).
Symonds is the author of seventeen books. His work has won multiple awards, including the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize for Naval History and the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. In 2014 he was awarded the Commodore Dudley Knox Medal for lifetime achievement. His newest book is a wartime biography of Admiral Chester Nimitz entitled Nimitz at War, released in 2022.
The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.