Dr. Frank Cooling

Dr. Frank Cooling, currently, Professor of National Security, Department of National Security Studies, Eisenhower School, National Defense University in Washington D.C.  Dr. Cooling previously served as Chief Historian and Research Director with the Department of Energy and as a historian with the Army, Air Force, and National Park Service, and with the Cruiser Olympia Association. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Weidner University, the U.S. Army War College, The George Washington University and the American Military University. He is also a past Executive Director of the Society for Military History.

A graduate in history from Rutgers University, he holds M.A. and Ph.D degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve 1956-1963. A former officer and trustee of the Society for Military History and past Fellow of the Company of Military Historians, he held an advanced research fellowship from the Naval War College in 1974. He has received the Distinguished Research Award from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the Douglas Southall Freeman award from the Military Order of the Stars and Bars, the Fletcher Pratt award from the New York Civil War Round Table, and the Moncado award from the American Military Institute for his writings. He also received the Victor Gondos Memorial Service Award from the Society for Military History.

Among his publications are Benjamin Franklin Tracy: Father of the Modern American Fighting Navy (1973); Symbol, Sword, and Shield: Defending Washington During the Civil War (1975, reprinted 1992); editor, War, Business, and American Society (1977); editor, The New American State Papers: Military Affairs (1979); Gray Steel and Bluewater Navy; The Formative Years of America's Military-Industrial Complex, 1881-1917 (1979); co-author, Combined Operations in War and Peace (1979); editor, War, Business, and World Military Industrial Complexes (1981); Forts Henry and Donelson; Key to the Confederate Heartland (1988); co-author, Mr. Lincoln's Forts: A Guide to the Civil War Defenses of Washington (1988); Jubal Early's Raid on Washington (1989); editor, Case Studies in the Development of Close Air Support (1991); editor, Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority (1994); editor, Robley D. Evans, A Sailor's Log (1994); Monocacy; The Battle that Saved Washington, (1997); Fort Donelson's Legacy War and Society in Tennessee and Kentucky, 1862-1863 (1997); USS Olympia; Herald of Empire (2000) Counter-Thrust; From the Peninsula to the Antietam (2007); The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot; The Fort Stevens Story (2013); Jubal Early; Robert E. Lee’s “Bad Old Man” (2014) and several hundred etc. etc. and several hundred articles, essays and reviews on aspects of military, naval and other history.

He is currently writing “Not Your Father’s Military Industrial Complex; Defense, Business and America as National Security State, 1607-2017.