Security Studies Prof Wins National Research Prize

Dr. William Taylor by Angelo State’s Porter Henderson Library

Once university travel resumes, the prize will fund Taylor’s archival research at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Kansas for his newest book, “The Advent of the All-Volunteer Force: Protecting Free Society,” which will be published in New York and London by Routledge, a global publisher of academic books and journals in the humanities and social sciences. Taylor will also present his research at the ADE national meeting to be conducted virtually this summer.

According to ADE, the Sharon Ritenour Stevens Prize is presented annually to an editor or other scholar with interests in women’s history and military history to support work on a project already in progress that is heavily dependent on documentary editing and documentary sources. Preference is given to persons studying women in uniformed military service, in various military support services, or on the home front during war time. The prize was established in 2019 in memory of Sharon Ritenour Stevens, associate editor of “The Papers of George C. Marshall.”

“The Advent of the All-Volunteer Force: Protecting Free Society” will be published by Routledge as part of its “Critical Moments in American History” series. It will be a complete narrative on the advent of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF), accompanied by relevant primary source documents, and will examine the AVF in four essential parts, including its history, impacts, challenges and implications. It will also be Taylor’s fifth book to be published since 2014.

Taylor’s first book, “Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training After World War II,” won a 2015 Crader Family Book Prize Honorable Mention. His second book, “Military Service and American Democracy: From World War II to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars,” is now required reading for every first-year cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, totaling about 1,200 cadets each year.

Also holder of ASU’s Lee Drain Endowed University Professorship and a previous chair of ASU’s Department of Security Studies and Criminal Justice, Taylor has now won 18 national grants, fellowships and prizes to fund research for his books, which are housed in over 1,450 libraries throughout the U.S. and more than 45 other countries. He is also the series editor for the new book series “Studies in Civil-Military Relations” through the University Press of Kansas, has contributed to 20 other books, and has published more than 85 reference articles and book reviews.