McManus earns Army Historical Foundation award
Posted by Peter Ehrhard
Dr. John C. McManus speaks at the St. Louis County Library about his book “Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany, April 1945” in 2016. Photo by Sam O’Keefe/Missouri S&T
Dr. John C. McManus, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of history and political science at Missouri S&T, has been awarded the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award in the Operational/Battle History category.
McManus earned the award for his latest book, titled To the End of the Earth: The U.S. Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945, which was published by Penguin Random House in 2023. The book was the third in a trilogy focused on World War II’s Pacific/Asia theater.
The Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Awards program was established in 1997 to recognize authors who make a significant contribution to the literature on U.S. Army history. The foundation is a non-profit group dedicated to preserving the history and heritage of the American soldier.
To the End of the Earth opens on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, at the beginning of a months-long campaign to liberate the country from Japanese occupation. Because McManus draws from first-hand accounts of the war, and extensive primary source research, readers can follow the perspective of several American soldiers and officers who fought not just enemy soldiers, but the climate, diseases and more.
His first book in this series, Fire and Fortitude, earned McManus the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History. The second book, Island Infernos, was awarded the 2021 Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award, also in the Operational/Battle History category.
McManus has authored 15 non-fiction historical books about the American military experience. He is in frequent demand as a speaker and expert commentator on 20th and 21st century American war, and has appeared on Fox News, C-Span, the Military Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Smithsonian Network, History and PBS. He also hosts two World War II-related podcasts that have generated more than seven million downloads.
McManus joined the Missouri S&T faculty in 2000. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Tennessee. He also holds a master of arts degree 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 he was named Curators’ Distinguished Professor of history and political science by the University of Missouri System – the first S&T faculty member in a humanities or social sciences field to achieve that distinction.
About Missouri S&T
Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.
Dear Peter, I just read your article about history professor John C. McManus, distinguished author of military history books. I would like to contact Professor McManus to see if he will be willing to take a look at my Vietnam War memoir, “The Gunner and the Grunt: Two Boston Boys in Vietnam with the First Cavalry Division Air mobile” which was published by Casemate Publishers (Military History). I would appreciate his opinion of my book. I was a helicopter crewman in the early stages of the war (1965-1966) and participated in combat assault missions against both Viet Cong and North Vietnam Army forces from the Cambodian border to the sands of the South China Sea. I will be age 80 soon and I hope that you can help me get in touch with Professor McManus before my time runs out. Thank you very much. Best wishes,
Michael L.Kelley, MSG, Ret. U.S. Army.
Hi Michael, I will forward your comment to Dr. McManus. Hopefully he is willing to review the book and respond. Thanks for your interest!