Ronald H. Spector

Ronald Harvey Spector (born January 17, 1943) is an American military historian.^[1] He is a professor at George Washington University.^[2]

Ronald Harvey Spector
Spector in late 1980s
Born	(1943-01-17) January 17, 1943 (age 82) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Historian, writer, professor
Nationality	American
Education	Johns Hopkins University (BA) Yale University (PhD)
Subject	Military history

Military career

He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in the Vietnam War, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the reserves. He was a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military history and taught at the University of Alabama. He was tasked to prepare a study of the Grenada operation.

Education

He graduated from Johns Hopkins University, and later gained a Ph.D from Yale University.^[3][4]

Academic career

Spector was a Senior Fulbright scholar in India from 1977 to 1978. He has taught at the National War College, the University of Alabama, and the U.S. Army War College. He currently is serving on the faculty of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.^[5] He is also a contributing writer for the Encyclopedia Britannica.^[6]

Spector joined the State Department's Historical Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation in the late 1980s as a representative of the American Historical Association. At the 1989 meeting, Spector and other members discussed expediting the publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series and improving the process of classifying and declassifying documents. He advocated reprinting and distributing the 20 backlogged volumes of FRUS to depository libraries, and suggested lobbying Congress for funding for this purpose. Spector also expressed his views on the need to maintain a complete historical record.^[7][8]

Accolades

In 2012, Spector was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize, for his breadth of contributions to the field of military history.^[9][10] His book Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan was the 1986 winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize in Naval History.^[5]

Organizations	Year	Category	Work	Result	Ref.
The New York Council of the Navy League of the United States	1986	Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize in Naval History	Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan	Won	[5]
Society for Military History	2001	Distinguished Book Awards	At War, at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century	Won	[11] [12] [13]
	2002		The Oxford Companion to American Military History	Won
	2012	Samuel Eliot Morison Prize	—	Honored	[14]

Bibliography

Books

• Spector, Ronald H. (1974). Admiral of the New Empire: The Life and Career of George Dewey. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-0078-3. LCCN 73090870. OCLC 1158824.^[15]
• Spector, Ronald H. (1977). Professors of War: The Naval War College and the Development of the Naval Profession. Washington, D.C.: Naval War College Press. ISBN 978-0-9637973-2-2. LCCN 77007155. OCLC 2965425.^[16]
• Spector, Ronald H. (1983). Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941-1960. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History. ISBN 978-0-16-001600-4. LCCN 83600103. OCLC 1011926436.^[17]
• Spector, Ronald H. (1985). Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-930360-3. LCCN 84047888. OCLC 10998802.^[18]
• Spector, Ronald H. (1987). U.S. Marines in Grenada, 1983 (PDF). Washington, D.C.: United States Marine Corps History Division, United States Marine Corps. OCLC 16166872.
• Spector, Ronald H. (1993). After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-930380-1. LCCN 92023853. OCLC 26160000.^[19]
• Chambers, John Whiteclay; Spector, Ronald H.; Anderson, Fred; Eden, Lynn; Glatthaar, Joseph T.; Piehler, G. Kurt (1999). The Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195071986.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-534092-1. LCCN 99021181. OCLC 213465912.^[20]
• Spector, Ronald H. (2001). At War, at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century. New York City: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-86085-2. LCCN 2001017551. OCLC 123102596.^[21]
• Spector, Ronald H. (2008). In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia. New York City: Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-6732-6. LCCN 2008275282. OCLC 233637025.^[22][23]
• Spector, Ronald H. (2022). A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-25465-5. LCCN 2022027160. OCLC 1272857193.^[24]

Articles

• Spector, Ronald H. (December 1986). "'What Did You Do In The War, Professor?'". American Heritage. Vol. 38, no. 1. ISSN 0002-8738. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
• Spector, Ronald H. (January 29, 1987). "Books; U.S. and Arms". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on February 21, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
• Spector, Ronald H. (1991). "Military History and the Academic World" (PDF). Army History. No. 19. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History. pp. 1–8. ISSN 1546-5330. JSTOR 26302864. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025.
• Spector, Ronald H. (February 2000). "The Right Man at the Right Time". Proceedings. Vol. 126, no. 2. ISSN 0041-798X. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved April 26, 2025 – via United States Naval Institute.
• Spector, Ronald (October 3, 2017). "What McMaster Gets Wrong About Vietnam". Politico Magazine. ISSN 2381-1595. Archived from the original on February 6, 2023. Retrieved April 30, 2025.

Papers

• Spector, Ronald H. (1988). ""In the Nam" and "Back in the World": American and Vietnamese Sources on the Vietnam War". The Journal of American History. 75 (1). Oxford University Press: 209–214. doi:10.2307/1889668. ISSN 1936-0967. JSTOR 1889668. S2CID 159845689.
• Spector, Ronald H. (1990). "An Improbable Success Story: Official Military Histories in the Twentieth Century". The Public Historian. 12 (1). University of California Press: 25–30. doi:10.2307/3378320. ISSN 0272-3433. JSTOR 3378320. S2CID 153610638.
• Spector, Ronald H. (2005). "After Hiroshima: Allied Military Occupations and the Fate of Japan's Empire, 1945-1947". The Journal of Military History. 69 (4). Society for Military History: 1121–1136. ISSN 1543-7795. JSTOR 3397181. S2CID 155020690. Project MUSE 187682.
• Spector, Ronald H. (2007). "Teetering on the Brink of Respectability". The Journal of American History. 93 (4). Oxford University Press: 1158–1160. doi:10.2307/25094603. ISSN 1936-0967. JSTOR 25094603. S2CID 155675050.
• Spector, Ronald H. (2013). "Phat Diem: Nationalism, Religion, and Identity in the Franco-Viet Minh War". Journal of Cold War Studies. 15 (3). MIT Press: 34–46. doi:10.1162/JCWS_a_00369. ISSN 1531-3298. JSTOR 26924383. S2CID 57566763. Project MUSE 522708.