Michael Scott Neiberg

Background

Michael Scott Neiberg was born on August 2, 1969, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, to Laurence Neiberg, a teacher, and Phyllis Neiberg. His scholarly career developed from an early grounding in American higher education and later focused on the political, social, and international dimensions of modern warfare, particularly the history of France, the United States, and Western Europe during the two world wars.

Education

Neiberg attended the University of Michigan, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1991. He subsequently studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, earning a master's degree in 1992 and a Ph.D. in history in 1996. His doctoral training in social and policy history contributed to the approach that characterizes his later work, which examines warfare through political, diplomatic, social, and cultural as well as operational perspectives.

Career

Neiberg began his academic career at the United States Air Force Academy, where he served successively as an assistant professor of history, associate professor, and professor of history between 1998 and 2005. In 2005 he joined the University of Southern Mississippi as a professor of history and co-director of the Center for the Study of War and Society. His research and teaching there centered on military history, the First World War, American military history, and the relationship between war and society. In 2015 Neiberg was selected as the inaugural Chair of War Studies at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the Department of National Security and Strategy. He serves as Professor of History and Chair of War Studies, working with senior-level national-security professionals and using historical models to examine global crises, strategy, political violence, and international security. His published scholarship specializes in the First and Second World Wars, with particular attention to the American and French experiences and to the wider history of Western Europe. He has also been associated with the Foreign Policy Research Institute as a senior fellow in its Center for the Study of America and the West.

Achievements

• Michael Scott Neiberg has been listed as a noteworthy history professor by Marquis Who's Who.

• The Wall Street Journal named Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I one of the five best books ever written about the First World War.

• Fighting the Great War: A Global History received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award in 2006.

• Neiberg's Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service was a finalist for the Thomas J. Wilson Prize and was named an Association of American University Presses Book for Understanding Our Times.

Works

More photos

• atlas

  • The Military Atlas of World War I

    (An illustrated geographical guide to the global theaters ...)

    2014

• book

  • Warfare and Society in Europe: 1898 to the Present

    (A history of warfare in Europe from the Fashoda crisis th...)

    2004
  • Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe

    (An account of the Potsdam conference and the political pr...)

    2015
  • The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America

    (A history of American responses to the First World War in...)

    2016
  • When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance

    (A study of the collapse of France in 1940, the emergence ...)

    2021

  • The Unwelcome Decline of Molly Marine: Historical Perspectives on Women in the American Military

    (Co-authored with Steven Schlossman; prepared under the di...)

    1994
  • Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service

    (A study of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps as an Ame...)

    2000
  • Foch: Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War

    (A study of Ferdinand Foch and the way he adapted command ...)

    2003
  • Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I

    (A study of the political cultures, public emotions, and s...)

    2011
  • Fighting the Great War: A Global History

    (A global history of the First World War, including its ma...)

    2006
  • The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944

    (A history of the liberation of Paris in August 1944 and t...)

    2012
  • Warfare in World History

    (A survey of the development of warfare from the ancient w...)

    2001

  • The Nineteenth Century

    (Volume 4 of Soldiers' Lives Through History, examining th...)

    2006
  • The Treaty of Versailles: A Very Short Introduction

    (A concise history of the treaty signed on June 28, 1919, ...)

    2019
  • The Second Battle of the Marne

    (A history of the 1918 Second Battle of the Marne and its ...)

    2008
  • The Western Front, 1914-1916

    (An account of the principal battlefront of the First Worl...)

    2008
  • Warfare in World History

    (A thematic survey of warfare and its historical consequen...)

    2005

• edited volume

  • The World War I Reader

    (A collection intended to place the First World War in its...)

    2007
  • Fascism

    (An edited collection examining the origins, development, ...)

    2006

  • The Great War Reader

    (An edited collection of primary and secondary sources on ...)

    2006

  • Arms and the Man: A Festschrift in Honor of Dennis Showalter

    (Co-edited scholarly collection honoring historian Dennis ...)

    2011
  • Finding Common Ground: New Directions in First World War Studies

    (Co-edited with Jennifer D. Keene, this volume presents ne...)

    2011

Views

Neiberg has emphasized the value of historical thinking for national-security professionals. He argues that history helps decision-makers recognize the complexity of global crises, identify connections among political and social conditions, and avoid reducing contemporary problems to the immediate headlines or to narrowly military explanations.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• The Wall Street Journal named Neiberg's Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I one of the five best books ever written about the First World War.

Connections

Neiberg married Barbara Neiberg on December 17, 1994. His parents were Laurence Neiberg, a teacher, and Phyllis Neiberg.

Father:

Laurence Neiberg

Neiberg's father, who worked as a teacher.

Mother:

Phyllis Neiberg

Neiberg's mother.

Spouse:

Barbara Neiberg

Neiberg's wife; they married on December 17, 1994.

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 189 Biographical reference entry on Michael S. Neiberg.
  2001