From 1985 to 2013, John M. Carland was a United States government official historian. He is the author of Combat Operations: Stemming the Tide, May 1965–October 1966—the official history of the Army’s first 18 months of combat in Vietnam—which he wrote for the Army Center of Military History. Later, at the Historian’s Office of the State Department, he compiled, edited and published two documentary histories: Vietnam, January–October 1972 and Vietnam, October 1972–January 1973. In retirement, he completed a third documentary history for the State Department, Vietnam: The Kissinger-Le Duc Tho Negotiations, August 1969–December 1973, which was published online in late 2017. This volume contains transcripts of the meetings between Kissinger and the North Vietnamese—68 over a four-year period. Carland has also published and delivered numerous articles and papers on the combat history of the United States, the Vietnam War and the higher conduct of the war.

Carland holds an undergraduate double degree in political science and history from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, an MA in political science from the City College of New York and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Toronto.