Renowned military historian to present 2009 Taylor Lecture

Dr. Roger J. Spiller, a well-known military historian, will present the 2009 Taylor Lecture, “Military History: A Manual for Future Wars,” at 3 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2. The lecture, free and open to the public, will be held in Flowers Hall 230 on the Texas State University-San Marcos campus. A reception will follow.

Spiller, who received Texas State’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1998, is the author of numerous books, including An Instinct for War (Harvard University Press 2007), which won several national awards. His earlier multi-volume Encyclopedia of American Military Biography received the American Library Association’s award for the best reference work of the year.

Before his retirement, Spiller held the George C. Marshall Chair of Military History at the United States Army Command and General Staff College. This year, he held the Distinguished Professorship of Military History at the United States Military Academy at West Point. A founder of the Combat Studies Institute at the USCGSC, he received the medal for meritorious civilian service from the U.S. Department of Defense. Additionally, he was an advisor to Ken Burns’ award-winning documentary on World War II.

The Taylor Lecture, the oldest at Texas State, is named for James Taylor, who served as director of the division of the Social Sciences at what was then Southwest Texas State for almost twenty years until his death in 1962. In the last year of his life, his colleagues inaugurated the Taylor Lecture to honor his long service to the University and to serve as a memorial to his life-long dedication to teaching and to the discipline of history.

More information is available from Dr. Frank de la Teja, delateja@txstate.edu.