Security Studies Prof Wins Book Prize and Fellowship

Dr. William A. Taylor, an assistant professor of security studies at Angelo State University, has been awarded a Crader Family Book Prize Honorable Mention for his book “Every Citizen a Soldier” and has also been awarded a University of North Texas Libraries Special Collections Research Fellowship for his forthcoming book “In Defense of Democracy.”

The Crader Prize recognizes an author’s first book that best exemplifies the values of the Crader Family Endowment for American Values: individual liberty, constitutional principles and civic virtue. The competition is open to books on any area of U.S., European or Latin-American history that examine the historical development of the political, religious and economic heritage of Western civilization or events directly related to it. Books must be peer-reviewed; published by an academic, university or commercial press in 2012-14; written by a sole author; and be a single work, rather than an edited collection or anthology.

In their award announcement, prize committee members commended Taylor’s book as “a very accessible, strongly researched, evocative history” analyzing “uniquely American concerns of citizen armies and national security.”

Taylor is also one of only three scholars chosen for the UNT Fellowship from a nationwide pool of applicants. The selected fellows will conduct research at UNT for a minimum of four days and a maximum of three months, write an overview of their research experience, and present a public lecture on their research as part of the UNT Fellowship Lecture Series.

Taylor will be conducting research for his upcoming book titled “In Defense of Democracy: American Military Service from World War II to Operation Enduring Freedom,” which will be published by University Press of Kansas in 2016. He has now won a total of seven national research grants and fellowships, including awards from the Harry S. Truman Library (2013 and 2015), the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation (2014), the Dwight D. Eisenhower Foundation (2014), the  George C. Marshall Library (2012) and the Society for Military History (2010).

A former U.S. Marine, Taylor joined the ASU Center for Security Studies faculty in 2011.  He maintains research interests in security studies, civil-military relations, grand strategy, defense policy, military manpower and military history. He has also contributed to nine other books and has published more than 40 reference articles and book reviews. His work has appeared in the Journal of American History, Choice, Joint Force Quarterly, Journal of Military History, Naval War College Review, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, On Point, Journal of Army History, Maryland Historical Magazine, Human Rights Review, Michigan War Studies Review, Journal of America’s Military Past, U.S. Military History Review, African Studies Quarterly and H-Net Reviews, among others.

In addition to his academic credentials, Taylor served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps for more than six years, holding posts in III Marine Expeditionary Force, Expeditionary Force Development Center and Marine Corps Combat Development Command. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds a doctorate in history from George Washington University