Craig L. Symonds is professor of history emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he taught for thirty years and served as History Department Chair. From 2017 to 2020 he was the Ernest J. King Distinguished Professor of Maritime History at the U.S. Naval War College, in Newport, RI. He is a four-time recipient of the Federal Government's Superior Civilian Service Medal, and in 2014 he received the Dudley W. Knox Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Naval Historical Foundation. He is the author of seventeen books, including Lincoln and His Admirals, which won the 2009 Lincoln Prize. His other Civil War era books include biographies of Joseph E. Johnston (1992), Patrick Cleburne (1997), and Franklin Buchanan (1999), as well as The Civil War at Sea (2009). He received the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Prize for his book Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (2005). His more recent books focus on World War II, including The Battle of Midway (2011), Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (2014), and World War II at Sea: A Global History (2018). His newest book is Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay (2022).