Robert Cowley is an American military historian, who writes on topics in American and European military history

Military history

Military history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships....

 ranging from the Civil War

Civil war

A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....

 through World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. He has held several senior positions in book and magazine publishing and is the founding editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 of the award-winning MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History; Cowley has also written extensively and edited three collections of essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s in counterfactual history

Virtual history

Counterfactual history, also sometimes referred to as virtual history, is a form of historiography which attempts to answer "what if" questions known as counterfactuals...

 known as What If?

What If? (essays)

What If?, subtitled The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is a collection of twenty essays and thirteen sidebars dealing with counterfactual history. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1999, ISBN 0-399-14576-1, and this book as well as its two sequels, What...

As part of his research he has traveled the entire length of the Western Front, from the North Sea to the Swiss Border.

He currently lives in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

.

Early life and education

Cowley is the son of prominent writer and literary critic Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...

 and Muriel Mauer. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy

Phillips Exeter Academy

Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...

 in New Hampshire, graduating in 1952. Thereafter, he earned an A.B. degree in history in 1956 from Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

 in Massachusetts.

Works

• Gamble for Victory. The Greatest Attack of World War I, by Robert Cowley, New York, Macmillan Books, 1964.
• Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age, by Malcolm Cowley and Robert Cowley, New York, Scribner, 1966.
• The Rulers of Britain, by Robert Cowley, New York, Stonehenge Press, 1982, ISBN 0867060689.
• Experience of War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 1993, ISBN 0440505534
• The Reader's Companion to Military History, by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1996, ISBN 978-0618127429
• No End Save Victory: Perspectives on World War II, by Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001, ISBN 978-0425183380
• With My Face to the Enemy: Perspectives on the Civil War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001, ISBN 978-0712679466
• The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 2003, ISBN 978-1844134199
• The Cold War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 2006, ISBN 978-0812967166
• What If?
  What If? (essays)
  What If?, subtitled The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is a collection of twenty essays and thirteen sidebars dealing with counterfactual history. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1999, ISBN 0-399-14576-1, and this book as well as its two sequels, What...
  
   The World’s Most Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 1999, ISBN 0-425-17642-8
• More What If?
  What If? (essays)
  What If?, subtitled The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is a collection of twenty essays and thirteen sidebars dealing with counterfactual history. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1999, ISBN 0-399-14576-1, and this book as well as its two sequels, What...
  
   Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001, ISBN 0-399-14795-0
• What Ifs?
  What If? (essays)
  What If?, subtitled The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is a collection of twenty essays and thirteen sidebars dealing with counterfactual history. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1999, ISBN 0-399-14576-1, and this book as well as its two sequels, What...
  
  of American History, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 1999, ISBN 0-399-15091-9
• What If? 2

External links

• Random House Author Spotlight
• The Lessons of War Sell in Peacetime, William H. Honan, New York Times, December 19, 1988.
• Generals, Battlefields, and What Raleigh Said, Richard Bernstein, New York Times, December 18, 1996.
• Review: The Reader's Companion to Military History, Andrew Krepinevich, Foreign Affairs, May/June 1997.
• Historians Warming To Games Of 'What If, William H. Honan, New York Times, January 7, 1998.
• Word for Word: Historical 'What Ifs?'; Annie Could've Gotten Her Gun And Blown Away the Kaiser, David Clay Large, New York Times, May 10, 1998.
• Books in Brief: Nonfiction, David Murray, New York Times, October 17, 1999.
• Making Books; The 'What Ifs' That Fascinate, Martin Arnold, New York Times, December 21, 2000.
• It All Could Have Been Different, Chuck Leddy, San Francisco Chronicle, September 9, 2003.
• Imagine, Laura Miller, New York Times Book Review, September 5, 2004.