About
AT A GLANCE:
Ambrose-Hesseltine Professor of U.S. Military History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
RESEARCH AREAS:
• Irregular warfare
• Colonial and postcolonial conflict
• U.S. defense policy
• Civil-military relations
BIOGRAPHY:
John W. Hall is the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair in U.S. Military History at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also co-founder and co-chair of the War in Society
and Culture Program. He is the author of Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black
Hawk War (Harvard, 2009) and numerous essays on early American warfare. He is a past
president of the Society for Military History and a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel,
with past assignments as a historian to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, U.S.
European Command, U.S. Central Command, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a graduate
of the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and
holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
PUBLICATIONS:
Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War. Harvard University Press, 2009.
“To Starve an Army: How Great Power Armies Respond to Austerity.” In Sustainable Security:
Rethinking American National Security Strategy, edited by Jeremi Suri and Benjamin
A. Valentino, 166-195. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
“An Irregular Reconsideration of George Washington and the American Military Tradition,”
Journal of Military History 78, no. 3 (July 2014): 961-993.
“‘My Favorite Officer’: George Washington’s Apprentice, Nathanael Greene,” in Sons
of the Father: George Washington and His Protégés, ed. Robert McDonald, 149-168 (Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 2013).
‘A Reckless Waste of Blood and Treasure’: The Last Campaign of the Second Seminole
War,” in Between War and Peace: How America Ends Its Wars, ed. Matthew Moten (New
York: Free Press, 2011).
CONNECT / FOLLOW:
LinkedIn: @john-hall-63958215