John M. Carland graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a degree in history and political science and spent a year in India at the University of Madras on a Rotary International Fellowship. At Madras, he studied modern Indian history and politics. Later he received his M.A. in political science from the City College of New York and his Ph.D. in British Imperial history from the University of Toronto. After teaching Imperial, English and Canadian history at the University of Kentucky, he joined the U.S. Army Center of Military History in 1985. There he became a subject matter expert on Army operations in the Vietnam War. In 2002, he moved to the Office of the Historian, Department of State, where he is now preparing a collection of documents on Vietnam War high policy and strategy for publication in the acclaimed documentary series Foreign Relations of the United States. In recent years he has also taught Vietnam War history at George Mason University. His published works include two books—The Colonial Office and Nigeria, 1898–1914 and Combat Operations: Stemming the Tide, May 1965 to October 1966 (a volume in the U.S. Army in Vietnam series)—as well as numerous articles and reviews on military and imperial history. His two most recent publications are “A Soldier Writes Home: Maj. Gen. Jonathan O. Seaman and the Vietnam War, 1965–1966,” in the Bridgehead Sentinel in 2001, and “An NVA General Looks Back,” in Vietnam Magazine in 2002. His next article—“‘The Simplest Thing is Difficult’: The United States Army and the War of 1812”—will appear in the Spring 2003 issue of Canadian Military History