The Penguin Speakers Bureau

Dr. Geoffrey Wawro is the General Olinto Mark Barsanti Professor of Military History and Director of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas. From 2000 to 2005, he was Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. A military historian by training, Dr. Wawro’s PhD is from Yale and his BA, magna cum laude, is from Brown. He also was a Fulbright Scholar in Vienna, Austria, from 1989 to 1991, and speaks German, French, Spanish, and Italian.

Dr. Wawro is the author of four highly regarded books: Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East (Penguin Press, 2010), The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France, 1870–1871 (Cambridge, 2003), Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914 (Routledge, 2000), and The Austro-Prussian War: Austria’s War with Prussia and Italy in 1866 (Cambridge, 1996). He also is the North American editor of the Cambridge Military Histories series—published by Cambridge University Press—and is a member of the History Book Club Review Board. Dr. Wawro has published articles in The Journal of Military History, War in History, The International History Review, The Naval War College Review, The American Scholar, and the European History Quarterly, and Op-Eds in the Los Angeles Times, New York Post, The Miami Herald, The Hartford Courant, and Providence Journal-Bulletin. He has won several academic prizes including the Austrian Cultural Institute Prize and the Society for Military History Moncado Prize for Excellence in the Writing of Military History.

Dr. Wawro has lectured widely on military innovation and international security in Europe, the U.S., and Canada, and for several years was the Naval War College Review’s “special correspondent,” a designation that took him to “places or events of strategic or technological interest,” most recently Iran, Brazil, and the Paris Air Show. From 2000 to 2009, he was host and anchor of several popular History Channel programs including Hardcover History, History’s Business, History vs. Hollywood, Hard Target, History in Focus, and Global View. Dr. Wawro’s guests included Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Jack Welch, Robert Rubin, Casper Weinberger, Warren Christopher, Niall Ferguson, Richard Overy, Stephen Ambrose, Michael Howard, Robert Dallek, Paul Theroux, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Dr. Wawro has two sons—Winslow and Matías—and he lives in Dallas, Texas.