Interest continues to build as we near the 2014 Annual Meeting of the U.S. Naval Institute, scheduled for 1500 on 16 April at the U.S. Navy Memorial and Naval Heritage Center, 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. The Institute’s Chair of the Board, Admiral Jim Stavridis, USN (Ret.), will kick off the meeting and announce the election results for the Naval Institute Board of Directors and the Editorial Board.
I am looking forward to making a positive report on the state of the Institute. Following this, we will present the author of the year awards for 2013.
We are honored to have two other very distinguished speakers on the agenda, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, USN, and Dr. James M. McPherson, the George Henry Davis ’86 Professor Emeritus of United States History at Princeton University. Dr. McPherson is one of the Nation’s foremost Civil War historians. He received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom. His most recent book is War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865.
We will have a reception immediately following the meeting, giving you the opportunity to meet our speakers, interact with the Board of Directors, congratulate the award winners, and catch up with other Members and supporters. I hope you are planning to attend.
In 1883, Commodore Stephen B. Luce, USN, published an article titled “War Schools” in the Naval Institute Proceedings, underlining the need for higher education for naval officers. A year later, Secretary of the Navy William E. Chandler established an advanced course of professional study, to be known as the Naval War College, and named Commodore Luce its first president. Luce would be followed as president by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, USN, and in 1888 and 1893 Proceedings published his eloquent opening addresses to the college on the study of the art of war and the importance of the study of history to the shaping of naval strategy.
The Institute’s partnership with the Naval War College has grown through the years with articles and books by college students, faculty, and leadership published in Proceedings and as titles of the Naval Institute Press. On 17-18 June, at the Naval War College’s Current Strategy Forum, the Institute will add a new dimension to the partnership by providing coverage and broader dissemination of the forum’s deliberations via our USNI News and other digital media.
Bill Ardolino, author of Fallujah Awakens: Marines, Sheikhs, and the Battle against Al Qaeda, published by the Naval Institute Press in 2013, is the recipient of the 2014 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award presented on behalf of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for outstanding nonfiction. In his introduction to the book, Ardolino writes: “Fallujah is iconic in the history of the Iraq War. For most westerners, the ‘City of Mosques’ conjures images of brutal house-to-house fighting, the killing and mutilation of American contractors, and the birth of an insurgency that prefaced years of chaos.” He describes the “Third Battle of Fallujah” based on his observations as an embedded journalist, as tribal leaders and U.S. Marines forged a surprising alliance enabling them to secure the heavily contested battleground.
Congratulations to Bill Ardolino. I recommend his riveting book to all Members.