Gregory A. Daddis
Professor
Office: AL 528
Email: [email protected]
Gregory A. Daddis is the Director of the Center for War and Society and the USS Midway Chair in Modern U.S. Military History. Originally from the Garden State of New Jersey, he holds a bachelor of science degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a master’s degree from Villanova University, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduating from West Point, he served for 26 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a colonel. He is a veteran of both Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and his military awards include the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, and the Meritorious Service Medals. His final assignment in the army was as the Chief of the American History Division in the Department of History at the United States Military Academy.
Daddis specializes in Cold War history with an emphasis on the American war in Vietnam. He has authored five books, including his most recent with Cambridge University Press, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men's Adventure Magazines (2020). Daddis also has published a trilogy on the American war in Vietnam with Oxford University Press: Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam (2017), Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam (2014) and No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War (2011). Additionally, he has published scholarly articles in some of his field’s leading journals, to include The Journal of Cold War Studies, The Journal of Military History, and The Journal of Strategic Studies.
Daddis also has participated in a number of initiatives to help educate the larger public on historical matters. He worked as an official adviser to Florentine Films for the 2017 Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary, The Vietnam War, and has led multiple tours to Vietnam for educational purposes. As part of his military deployments, he served as the Command Historian to the U.S. Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) in Baghdad, Iraq. Daddis also has been a panelist for grant reviews with the National Endowment for the Humanities, performed as a member of the Editorial Advisery Board for The Journal of Military History, and volunteered as a Regional Coordinator for the Society for Military History. He has published several op-ed pieces commenting on current military affairs, to include writings in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and National Interest magazine.
Before joining the History Department at SDSU, he directed the M.A. program in War and Society Studies at Chapman University.
Books
Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men's Adventure Magazines. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Withdrawal: Reassessing America's Final Years in Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Fighting in the Great Crusade: An 8th Infantry Artillery Officer in World War II. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.
Articles and Chapters
“Planning for a War in Paradise: The 1966 Honolulu Conference and the Shape of the Vietnam War,” Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 21, No. 3, Summer 2019.
“Mansplaining Vietnam: Male Veterans and America’s Popular Image of the Vietnam War,” Journal of Military History Vol. 82, No. 1, January 2018.
“A Disconnected Dialogue: American Military Strategy, 1964-1968,” Oklahoma Humanities Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall-Winter 2017.
“Faith in War: The American Roots of Global Conflict,” Parameters: The US Army War College Quarterly Vol. 46, No. 4, Winter 2016-2017.
“Choosing Progress: Evaluating the ‘Salesmanship’ of the Vietnam War in 1967,” in Assessing War: The Challenge of Measuring Success and Failure, eds. Leo J. Blanken, Hy Rothstein, and Jason J. Lepore. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015.