Professor Grimsley received an MA in War Studies from Kings College London in 1985 and a PhD in History from The Ohio State University in 1992. He teaches American military history with an emphasis on the Civil War.
He is the author of The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1995), which won the Lincoln Prize.
He co-authored Warfare in the Western World, the military history textbook in use at the U.S. Military Academy. Other works include Civilians in the Path of War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002) (with Clifford J. Rogers); The Collapse of the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001) (with Brooks D. Simpson); And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), Gettysburg: A Battlefield Guide (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999) (with Brooks D. Simpson), and Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006) (with Steven E. Woodworth). He is currently writing a book on the connections between the 1864 military and political campaigns for the "Pivotal Moments in American History" series, published by Oxford University Press.
He also maintains WarHistorian.org, a web site focusing on military history and national security affairs. Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, a weblog associated with the site, received the 2005 Cliopatria Award for Best Individual Blog.
In 1994 the OSU chapter of Phi Alpha Theta gave him its Clio Award for Distinguished Teaching in History. He also received the Ben Jones Award for Outstanding Teaching from the College of Humanities in 1997 and Ohio State's Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award in 1999.
Since July 2008, he has been a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College, where he holds the Harold Keith Johnson Chair of Military History. He returns to Ohio State in July 2010.
Professor Grimsley's graduate advisees include:
Valerie Hudson
James Perrin
Thomas Spahr
Will Waddell
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