Skip Section Navigation

Military History and the University of North Texas Press

 

  • I’m Alive is the compelling diary of Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJG) Errol F. Reilly, a 26-year-old Navy fighter pilot, written aboard the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea during his first Vietnam combat cruise. In writing that is colorful, perceptive, and, at times, both humorous and heartbreaking, Reilly chronicles his daily experiences “living, playing, and fighting” within the context of the Navy’s fledgling air war. Covering the period from December 1964 to October 1965, I’m Alive details an untested F-8 Crusader pilot’s personal journey from “nugget” aviator to seasoned combat professional. Reilly’s feelings quickly change from patriotic enthusiasm to frustrated disillusionment as he begins to experience the realities of Vietnam’s deadly air warfare. His keen observations provide rare insights into the evolving strategies and tactics of the US Navy in Vietnam.
  • During World War II, tens of thousands of African Americans served in segregated combat units in U.S. armed forces. The majority of these units were found in the U.S. Army, and African Americans served in every one of the combat arms. They found opportunities for leadership unparalleled in the rest of American society at the time. Several reached the field grade officer ranks, and one officer reached the rank of brigadier general.Beyond the Army, the Marine Corps refused to enlist African Americans until ordered to do so by the president in June 1942, and two African American combat units were formed and did see service during the war. While the U.S. Navy initially resisted extending the role of African American sailors beyond kitchens, eventually the crew of two ships was composed exclusively of African Americans. The Coast Guard became the first service to integrate-initially with two shipboard experiments and then with the integration of most of their fleet. Finally, the famous Tuskegee airmen are covered in the chapter on air warfare. Proud Warriors makes the case that the wartime experiences of combat units such as the Tank Battalions and the Tuskegee Airmen ultimately convinced President Truman to desegregate the military, without which the progress of the Civil Rights Movement might also have been delayed.
  • The way an army understands warfare and how to achieve victory on the battlefield has a tremendous impact on its organization, equipment, training, and doctrine. The central ideas of that understanding form an army’s Theory of Victory, which informs how that army fights. From the disasters of the War of 1812, Winfield Scott ensured that America adopted a series of ideas formed in the crucible of the French Revolution and perfected by Napoleon Bonaparte as the United States Army’s Theory of Victory. These French ideas dominated American warfare on the battlefields of the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I.
  • Entering West Point from central Oklahoma, Raymond O. Barton’s prowess on the football field and wrestling team earned him the nickname “Tubby,” an appellation used by his friends and fellow officers for the rest of his life. Based on personal letters and documents, this biography explores Barton’s military career from his days as a cadet through thirty—seven years of military service, culminating with his command in World War II of the 4th Infantry Division during the US Army’s campaign in France. From the inside readers have a picture of officership during the intense days of training and expansion on the eve of World War II. Finally, thanks to the discovery of his war diary, we have a close—up view of his senior leadership as he trained in England for the landing on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944.
  • When America entered World War II in 1941, it was first left to the Army Air Forces to take the fight to Germany. In January 1942 the US Eighth Air Force was created and ordered to England, even though it was without men, equipment, or airplanes. This is the story of Brigadier General Ira C. Eaker’s two years with VIII Bomber Command, and later as commander of the Eighth, as he worked to grow it into a force capable of striking German targets from above twenty thousand feet.
  • During World War II the United States mobilized its industrial assets to become the great “Arsenal of Democracy” through the cooperation of the government and private firms. The Dallas Story examines a specific aviation factory, operated by the North American Aviation (NAA) company in Dallas, Texas. Terrance Furgerson explores the construction and opening of the factory, its operation, its relations with the local community, and the closure of the facility at the end of the war.
  • The Presidio of San Francisco, founded in 1776, stood guard over a major port that evolved into the storied city by the Golden Gate. The Spanish first erected a less-than-imposing fort and a pair of tiny artillery emplacements armed with antiquated cannons. In the early 1820s, the Mexican government inherited the presidio but lost it to the manifest destiny of the United States. By the 1840s the US Army constructed major defense bulwarks on both sides of the “harbor of harbors.” Early earthen and brick bastions gave way to steel and concrete, and eventually missiles bearing nuclear warheads studded the landscape.

The University of North Texas Press was founded in 1987 and published its first book in 1989. Our mandate runs parallel to the mandate of any university, which is to teach, to support scholarly research, and to reach out to the community. We do that by publishing both academic and general interest books useful to the student and general reader alike. To ensure the highest quality publications, everything we publish is peer reviewed and approved by a faculty Editorial Board.

Our commitment to military history began in 1993 with the first book in our War and the Southwest Series, under the series editorship of Richard G. Lowe, Gustav L. Seligmann, and Calvin L. Christman. The series includes first-hand accounts of military experiences by men and women of the Southwest, histories of warfare involving the people of the Southwest, and analyses of military life in the Southwest itself. The Southwest is defined loosely as those states of the United States west of the Mississippi River and south of a line from San Francisco to St. Louis as well as the borderlands straddling the Mexico-United States boundary.

The series includes works involving military life in peacetime in addition to books on warfare itself. It ranges chronologically from the first contact between indigenous tribes and Europeans to the present. The series is based on the belief that warfare is an important if unfortunate fact of life in human history and that understanding war is a requirement for a full understanding of the American past. Books published in the War and the Southwest Series include:

  • Foo: A Japanese-American Prisoner of the Rising Sun - The Secret Prison Diary of Frank "Foo" Fujita
  • Wen Bon: A Naval Air Intelligence Officer behind Japanese Lines in China in WWII
  • An Artist at War: The Journal of John Gaitha Browning
  • The 56th Evac. Hospital: Letters from a WWII Army Doctor
  • CAP Môt: The Story of a Marine Special Forces Unit in Vietnam, 1968-1969
  • "Surrounded by Dangers of all Kinds": The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley
  • Crossing the Pond: The Native American Effort in World War II
  • The Royal Air Force in Texas: Training British Pilots in Terrell during World War II
  • Spartan Band: Burnett's 13th Texas Cavalry in the Civil War
  • The Seventh Star of the Confederacy: Texas during the Civil War
  • Gregory W. Ball, They Called Them Soldier Boys: A Texas Infantry Regiment in World War I (2013)
  • Robert W. Lull, Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams: Leader of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and the 8th U.S. Cavalry (2013)
  • Alan D. Gaff and Dolad H. Gaff, Ordered West: The Civil War Exploits of Charles A. Curtis (2017)
  • Alan D. Gaff and Dolad H. Gaff, From the Halls of the Montezumas: Mexican War Dispatches from James L. Freaner, Writing under the Pen Name "Mustang" (2019)
  • Lloyd Uglow, A Military History of Texas (2022)
  • Terrance Furgerson, The Dallas Story: The North American Aviation Plant and Industrial Mobilization during World War II (2023)
  • John P. Langellier, Bastion by the Bay: The Presidio of San Francisco, from Outpost of Empire to Magnificent Park (2026)

In recent years the UNT Press launched a new series to tie in with the Oral History Program, called North Texas Military Biography and Memoir Series. Publications in this series have been adopted as Selections by the Military Book Club and by professors for course use, and include:

  • Rattler One-Seven: A Vietnam Helicopter Pilot's War Story
  • With the Possum and the Eagle: The Memoir of a Navigator's War over Germany and Japan
  • In Hostile Skies: An American B-24 Pilot in World War II
  • Nancy Love and the WASP Ferry Pilots of World War II
  • James T. Gillam, Life and Death in the Central Highlands: An American Sergeant in the Vietnam War, 1968-1970 (2010)
  • Joann Puffer Kotcher, Donut Dolly: An American Red Cross Girl's War in Vietnam (2017) 
  • James G. Van Straten, A Different Face of War: Memories of a Medical Service Crops in Vietnam (2018)
  • James Carson, Against the Grain: Colonel Henry M. Lazelle and the U.S. Army (2015) 
  • Fred H. Allison, We Were Going to Win, or Die There: With the Marines at Gudalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan: Roy H. Elrod (2017)
  • Jeffrey L. Patrick, Yesterday There Was Glory: With the 4th Division, A.E.F., in World War I Gerlad Andrew Howell (2017)
  • David R. "Buff" Honodel, The Phantom Vietnam War: An F-4 Pilot's Combat over Laos (2018)
  • Tom Faulkner and David L. Snead, Flying with the Fifteen Air Force: A B-24 Pilot's Missions from Italy during World War II (2018)
  • Kevin P. Gilheany, Minding the Helm: An Unlikely Career in the U.S. Coast Guard (2019)
  • Terry L. Thorsen, Phantom in the Sky: A Marine's Back Seat View of the Vietnam War (2019) 
  • Jeffrey L. Patrick, A Machine-Gunner in France: The Memoirs of Ward Schrantz, 35th Division, 1917-1919 (2019)
  • Jonathan Templin Ritter, From Texas to Tinian and Tokyo Bay: The Memoirs of Captain J. R. Ritter, Seabee Commander during the Pacific War, 1942-1945 (2019)
  • Georgianne Burlage, Living in the Shadow of a Hell Ship: The Survival Story of U.S. Marine George Burlage, a WWII Prisoner-of-War of the Japanese (2020)
  • John P. Langellier, Scouting with the Buffalo Soldiers: Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke, Frederic Remington, and the Tenth U.S. Cavalry in the Southwest (2020)
  • Lee Cook, Diry Eddie's War: Based on the World War II DIary of Harry "Dirty Eddie" March, Jr., Pacific Fighter Ace (2021) 
  • James C. KEarney and William H. Clamurro, Duty to Serve, Duty to Conscience: The Story of Two Conscientious Objector Combat Medics during the Vietnam War (2023)
  • James R. Smither, Death and Life in the Big Red One: A Soldier's Wolrd War II Journey from North Africa to Germany (2023)
  • Fred H. Allison, My Darling Boys: A Family at War, 1941-1947 (2023)
  •  Stephen Alan Bourque, Tubby: Raymond O. Barton and the US Army, 1889-1963 (2024)
  • Reilly Errol, Kevin Callahan, and Chris Callahan, I'm Alive: A Young Fighter Pilot's Diary of the US Navy Air War in Vietnam, 1964-1965 (2026) 

UNT Press is the publisher of Warriors and Scholars: A Modern War Reader, a collection of the best presentations by prominent military historians and veterans invited to the annual Hurley Military History Seminar at the University of North Texas.

UNT Press also has an American Military History Series. These titles include: 

  • Alec Wahlman, Storming the City: U.S. Military Performance in Urban Warfare from World War II to Vietnam (2015)
  • Nathan A Jennings, Riding for the Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822-1865 (2016)
  • Jonathan Templin Ritter, Stilwell and Mountbatten in Burma: Allies at War, 1943-1944 (2017)
  • Steven Ramold, Obstinate Heroism: The Confederate Surrenders after Appomattox (2020)
  • Ted N. Easterling, War in the Villages: The U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons in the Vietnam War (2021)
  • Alexander M. Bielakowski, Proud Warriors: African American Combat Units in World War II (2021)
  • Matt Dietz, Eagles Overhead: The History of US Air Force Forward Air Controllers, from the Meuse-Argonne to Mosul (2023)
  • William J. Daugherty, The US Eight Air Force in World War II: Ira Eaker, Hap Arnold, and Building American Air Power, 1942-1943 (2024)
  • Michael A. Bonura, Under the Shadow of Napoleon: The US Army's Doctrine, Education, and Theory of Victory from 1814 to 1941 Second Edition (2026)

The University of North Texas Press welcomes queries from authors whose manuscripts fit one of our series or otherwise focus on American military history. Direct all correspondence to Ronald Chrisman, Director at Ronald.chrisman@unt.edu.