Dr. John C. McManus, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of history and political science at Missouri University of Science and Technology, has received the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award in the category of Operational/Battle History for his book Island Infernos: The US Army’s Pacific War Odyssey, 1944.

The Distinguished Writing Award is given by the Army Historical Foundation in recognition of significant contributions to literature concerning U.S. Army history. Winning authors receive a plaque honoring their book and a $1,000 cash award.

The book covers the main conflicts in the Pacific during World War II, including the battles for Saipan and Guam, the carnage of Peleliu, Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines and the ferocious jungle combat to capture the island of Leyte.

Island Infernos was hailed as “a feat of prodigious scholarship and exhaustive research” by the Wall Street Journal and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch listed it among the paper’s favorite books of 2021.

Island Infernos is the second in a planned three-volume series on the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II. The first book in the series, Fire and Fortitude, earned McManus the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History.

McManus, one of the nation’s leading military historians, is the author of 14 non-fiction books about American military history. He was named to the University of Missouri System 2019-20 class of the Presidential Engagement Fellows based on his demonstrated excellence and ability to communicate his research to the public and is in frequent demand as a speaker and expert commentator on 20th and 21st century American war. He hosts the World War II history podcast Someone Talked! and has appeared on C-Span, the Military Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Smithsonian Network, History and PBS.

McManus joined the Missouri S&T faculty in 2000. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Tennessee and a master of arts in history and a bachelor of journalism degree, both from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He received the 2012 Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and in 2014 was the first Missouri S&T faculty member in a humanities or social sciences field to be named a Curators’ Distinguished Professor by the University of Missouri System. During the 2018 academic year, he held the Dr. Leo A. Shifrin Distinguished Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

About Missouri University of Science and Technology

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,200 students. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System and located in Rolla, Missouri, Missouri S&T offers 101 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top 10 universities for return on investment, according to Business Insider. S&T also is home to the Kummer Institute, made possible by a $300 million gift from Fred and June Kummer. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.