History is often mistaken, that’s why historians are in business.
- John Murrin
Dr. James Kirby Martin
Well-known for his writings on American military and social history, Martin holds the rank of Distinguished University Professor of History. He is the author or editor of eleven books, including Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero; Drinking in America: A history; A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic; and Men in Rebellion. As a former Department Chair, he helped create the Department’s Public History Program. He also designed and authored the grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities that established two chaired positions in History and the Professions. He serves as general editor for New York University Press’s American Social Experience series and is currently finishing works on the history of smoking in America and the Saratoga campaign of 1777 as a case study in the role of politics in shaping warfare.
Dr. Ray Raymond
Former British diplomat and adviser to then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair now Professor of Government and History, State University of New York, and Adjunct Professor of Government and International Relations, United States Military Academy, West Point. Dr. Raymond has served as the Thomas Hawkin Johnson Distinguished Visiting Professor at West Point and Abraham Lincoln Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the University of Maine. He has lectured at leading universities, colleges and conferences throughout the United States on the Revolutionary War from a British perspective and advised the US National Park Service on the reinterpretation of the conflict.
He has written a history of the Purple Heart, “Some Gave All” and published extensively on the history of Anglo-American relations from the 18th century to the present. Dr. Raymond was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and by His Royal Highness the Duke of York for his contributions to Anglo-American Relations. Dr. Raymond has also received the civilian version of the US Army’s Distinguished Service Medal.
Thomas Fleming
Thomas Fleming is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and the author of over forty nonfiction and fiction titles, including Liberty! The American Revolution companion to the PBS series, Washington’s Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge, and The Officers’ Wives. He is the only author ever to have won main selections for the Book-of-the-Month Club in both fiction and nonfiction.
His latest title is Everybody’s Revolution: A New Look at the People who won America’s Freedom, published by Scholastic Nonfiction. The book is the product of almost forty years of research into the American Revolution. “I gradually realized that almost no one knew that the war was fought” states Fleming, “not only by two groups of Englishmen, but by Irish, German, Jewish, African and Dutch immigrants to America, as well as native Americans (Indians) who fought on both sides, and by American women, who also believed fervently in the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That is why I consider this among my most important books. It’s a new way of looking at the Revolution. I got the idea for the book many years ago, when I met Benjamin Quarles, the gifted black historian who wrote The Negro in the American Revolution. I can still hear him telling me there were ‘many versions’ of American History, rooted in the very different experiences of each of the ethnic groups and races that make up the American people. This book represents my application of that profound observation to the American Revolution.”
Thomas Fleming is a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. He has been president of the American branch of PEN, the international writers’ organization. He has also been chairman of the American Revolution Round Table. He is currently the senior scholar at the National Center for the American Revolution at Valley Forge. A graduate of St. Peter’s Prep and Fordham University (1950) he lives in New York with his wife, Alice, a distinguished writer of books for young readers.
Dr. Carol Berkin
Dr. Berkin is Presidential Professor of History at Baruch College and a member of the history faculty of the Graduate Center of CUNY. She teaches early American and women’s history. Her publications include: Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist (1974); First Generations: Women of Colonial America (1996); A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (2001), Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence(2004), and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (2009).
Professor Berkin has worked as a consultant on several PBS and History Channel documentaries, including, The “Scottsboro Boys; which was nominated for an Academy Award as the best documentary of 2000. She has also appeared as a commentator on screen in the PBS series by Ric Burns, “New York; the Middlemarch series “Benjamin Franklin” and “Alexander Hamilton” on PBS, and the MPH series, “The Founding Fathers7 She serves on the Board of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Board of the National Council for History Education.
James L. Nelson
Jim Nelson is the author of seventeen works of maritime fiction and history, including the critically acclaimed Benedict Arnold’s Navy. His books cover the gamut from Vikings to piracy in Colonial America, the naval action of the American Revolution and the Civil War. His novel Glory in the Name was the winner or the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award for Best Military Fiction and his nonfiction George Washington’s Secret Navy won the Naval Order’s Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval History. He has lectured all over the country and appeared on the Discovery Channel, History Channel and BookTV. He currently lives in Harpswell with his former shipmate from the Golden Hinde, now wife, Lisa and their four children.
Dr. John Murrin
Professor of History, Princeton University. He is the co-author of “Liberty, Equality and Power: A History of the American People; and Co-Editor of Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development. Professor Murrin also wrote many articles for leading scholarly journals in American history including Perspectives on the American Past and the Journal of American History.
Dr. Don Higginbotham
Dowd Professor of History and Peace, War and Defense, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Nominated for the Pulitzer prize for his acclaimed study The War of American Independence; Professor Higginbotham also wrote numerous other books including George Washington: Uniting a Nation; Revolution in America; George Washington and the American Military Tradition; and George Washington Reconsidered.
Lt. General David R. Palmer (retired)
Professor of History, Princeton University. He is the co-author of “Liberty, Equality and Power: A History of the American People; and Co-Editor of Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development. Professor Murrin also wrote many articles for leading scholarly journals in American history including Perspectives on the American Past and the Journal of American History.
Dr. Charles Neimeyer
Dr. Charles Neimeyer is the Director and Chief of Marine Corps History at Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia. As such he is responsible for the collection, production, publication, and dissemination of Marine Corps History and manages the functioning of a wide variety of Marine Corps historical programs. Prior to coming to Quantico, Dr. Neimeyer was the former Dean of Academics at the Naval War College and Forrest Sherman Chair of Public Diplomacy in Newport, Rhode Island and a former Vice President of Academic Affairs at Valley Forge Military Academy and College. Prior to his stint as Academic Dean at the Naval War College, he was a full time professor of National Security Affairs from 1997-2002. He also previously served as an award winning history professor at the US Naval Academy and the University of Central Oklahoma where he was named the 1997 Liberal Arts Outstanding Professor of the Year.
He retired from the Marines in 1996 as a Lieutenant Colonel. Dr. Neimeyer has authored a variety of history and national security affairs articles and has published the widely acclaimed monograph, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army, 1775 – 1783, by the New York University Press in 1996. He is the author of a second monograph, The Revolutionary War, (Greenwood Press, 2007) and has published numerous articles on Marine Corps and American History in Naval Proceedings, the Marine Corps Gazette, and Leatherneck Magazine. His most recent book was an edited volume published in 2008 by the Naval Institute Press and entitled, On the Corps and was recently named by Naval Proceedings as one of the top naval history books of 2008. Dr. Neimeyer holds a Master’s Degree and Ph.D. in History (with distinction) from Georgetown University and an additional Master’s Degree from the Naval War College, from which he graduated with highest honors.
Dr. Holly Mayer
Associate Professor of History, Duquesne University, she is author of “Following the Army” in 1997. She is also the editor of a documentary history of the United States from the Colonial Era to the Civil War. After earning a BA. at the University of Pennsylvania, an MA. at the University of Oregon, a Ph.D. at the College of William and Mary, and duty with the United States Army, Professor Mayer moved to Pittsburgh to teach at Duquesne. Her courses, which are primarily on early America, encompass cultural, social, and political issues, including the relationships between European, African, and Native American peoples, gender roles, intellectual trends, and the development of American identity. Dr. Mayer’s research field is broadly defined as late eighteenth-century America with a particular focus on the American Revolution, civil-military relations, and the evolution of American character and culture.
Professor Emeritus, Mark Lender
Mark Edward Lender is Professor Emeritus of History at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, and the coauthor of A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic and Citizen Soldier: The Revolutionary War Journal of Joseph Bloomfield.
Bill Stanley
Mr. Stanley was one of the first inspirations for the filmmakers and lauded their efforts to tell a more objective side of the Arnold story. A Norwich Free Academy graduate, Mr. Stanley attended the New York School of Modern Photography and joined the U.S. Marine Corps with his brother, Jim. Mr. Stanley became a combat photographer and later a newspaper photographer for the Norwich Bulletin. In 1954 he shot exclusive photos of a burning Air France airliner that crashed in Preston. He and his brother served as the morning wake-up team on radio station WICH before Bill became a stockbroker in the late 1950s.
A lifetime Benedict Arnold advocate, Mr. Stanley made Benedict Arnold come to life for people in the infamous general’s hometown. As Mr. Stanley told the story over and over, he became fascinated with Arnold in high school when researching the heroes of the American Revolution. Mr. Stanley wrote a paper saying Arnold won three key battles early in the war, keeping the Revolution alive. The teacher told Mr. Stanley to “take a few days off’ allegedly for making a mockery of his history class.
In 1984, Mr. Stanley took the witness stand as Arnold himself in a mock treason trial at NFA. He donned the lavish attire of the spendthrift general numerous times to tell Arnold’s story. Mr. Stanley placed one of his historic plaques marking landmark sites at Arnold’s 1741 birthplace at the corner of Washington Street and Arnold Place – a spot Mr. Stanley loved as it names the generals whose careers crossed in so many ways. In 2004, Mr. Stanley secured a proper gravestone for Arnold’s burial site at Battersea Church in London. He called it “great closure” when he attended the gravestone ceremony amid so many dignitaries and the Producers of the documentary.
Faith Davison
As the Mohegan Tribal Archivist and Librarian for over fourteen years (now retired), she was instrumental in the building of the tribal library, in acquiring and repatriating Mohegan cultural properties, and in developing curricula about her tribe for Connecticut’s public schools. She is also author of a number of scholarly publications on Mohegan history.
Faith obtained her MLS (with distinction) from the University of Rhode Island with a BLA in Anthropology (cum laude) from Connecticut College. Besides serving on the Indian Papers Project’s Advisory Committee, she is an active participant in a number of organizations: Archaeological Society of Connecticut, Davis-Stanton Foundation, Friends of the State Archaeologists Office, Montville Historical Society, Norwich Historical Society, New England Museum Association, New England Archivists, New England Library Association, American Library Association, American Indian Library Association, New England Native American Library Association, Slater Museum Collections, Committee and Stanton Davis Homestead Museum and the Connecticut State Library Advisory Council for Library Planning and Acquisitions.
Park Ranger, Eric Schnitzer
Eric is one of the foremost authorities on the Battle of Saratoga and a Park Ranger for the National Park Service and the Saratoga National Historical Park.
Bruce Harris
Bruce is an authority on the African American experience in Colonial America and the Revolutionary War.