HIGHAM, Robin (David Stewart) 1925-

PERSONAL:

Born June 20, 1925, in London, England; U.S. citizen; son of Frank David (a literary agent and novelist) and Anne (Stewart) Higham; married Barbara Davies, 1950; children: Peter, Susan, Martha, Carol. Education: Attended University of New Hampshire, 1947-48; Harvard University, A.B. (cum laude), 1950, Ph.D., 1957; Claremont Graduate School, M.A., 1953. Religion: Presbyterian.

ADDRESSES:

Home—2961 Nevada St., Manhattan, KS 66502. Office—Sunflower University Press, Box 1009, Manhattan, KS 66505-1009.

CAREER:

Instructor at Webb School of California, 1950-52, and University of Massachusetts, 1954-57; University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, assistant professor, 1957-63; Kansas State University, Manhattan, associate professor, 1963-66, professor of history, 1966-98, graduate faculty lecturer, 1971. Historian, British Overseas Airways Corp., 1960-66, 1976-78; archivist, American Committee on the History of the Second World War, 1977—. U.S. correspondent, Histoire economie et societe, 1984—. Vice chairman of editorial board, University Press of Kansas, 1967-71; military advisory editor, University Press of Kentucky, 1969-75, adviser to history committee, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1974—; founder, president, director, and publisher, Sunflower University Press, Manhattan, KS, 1977—. Military service: Royal Air Force, 1943-47; became flight sergeant pilot; received Burma Star.

MEMBER:

International Institute for Strategic Studies, American Aviation Historical Society, U.S. Naval Institute, American Military Institute, Air Force Historical Foundation, Organization of American Historians, Aviation/Space Writers Association, American Committee on the History of the Second World War (member of board of directors, 1980—), American Association for State and Local History, Society for History of Technology, Council of the Society for Army Historical Research (corresponding member), Conference on British Studies (member of publications committee, 1965—), Friends of the RAF Museum, Arnold Air Society (life member), Society for Scholarly Publishing, Conference of Historic Aviation Writers (organizer, 1982—), Riley County Historical Society (director, 1983-88), United States Military History Commission (director, 1994-98).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Social Science Research Council, National Security Policy Research fellowship, 1960-61; honorary colonel, Tar Heel Air Force, 1962; Samuel Eliot Morison Prize, American Military Institute, 1985; President's Award, Air Force Historical Foundation, 1988.

WRITINGS:

Britain's Imperial Air Routes, 1918-1939, G. T. Foulis, 1960, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1961.

An Introduction to Maritime, Naval, and Aeronautical History, University of North Carolina Library, 1960.

The British Rigid Airship, 1908-1931: A Study in Weapons Policy, G. T. Foulis, 1961, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1976.

Armed Forces in Peacetime: Britain, 1918-1939, G. T. Foulis, 1963.

The Military Intellectuals in Britain: 1918-1939, Rutgers University Press, 1966, reprinted, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1981.

(With David H. Zook, Jr.) A Short History of Warfare, Twayne (New York, NY), 1966.

Air Power: A Concise History, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1972, 4th edition published as One Hundred Years of Air Power and Aviation, Texas A & M University Press (College Station, TX), 2003.

The Compleat Academic: Being an Informal Guide to the Ivory Tower, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1975.

(Author of introduction, with Donald J. Mrozek and Jeanne Louise Allen Newell) Franklin S. Allen, The Martin Marauder and the Franklin Allens: A Wartime Love Story, Sunflower University Press (Manhattan, KS), 1980.

(With Mary Crisper and Guy Dresser) A Brief Guide to Scholarly Editing, Sunflower University Press, 1982.

Diary of Disaster: British Aid to Greece, 1940-1941, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1986.

The Bases of Air Strategy: Building Airfields for the Royal Air Force, 1915-1945, Airlife (Shrewsbury, England), 1998.

EDITOR

The Consolidated Author and Subject Index to the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, 1857-1963, compiled by Karen Cox Wing, University Microfilms (Ann Arbor, MI), 1964.

Bayonets in the Street, University Press of Kansas, 1969, enlarged edition, Sunflower University Press (Manhattan, KS), 1989.

Official Histories: Essays in Historiography and Bibliographies of Official History and of Service Historical Sections around the World, Kansas State University Library, 1970.

Civil Wars in the Twentieth Century, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1972.

A Guide to the Sources of British Military History, University of California Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1972.

(Supervisory editor) John Greenwood, American Defense Policy since 1945: A Preliminary Bibliography, University Press of Kansas, 1973.

Intervention or Abstention: The Dilemma of U.S. Foreign Policy, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1975.

Flying Combat Aircraft of the USAAF-USAF, Volume 1 (with Abigail T. Siddall), Iowa State University Press, 1975, Volume 2 (with Carol Williams), Iowa State University Press, 1978, Volume 3 (with Carol Williams), Sunflower University Press (Manhattan, KS), 1980.

Guide to the Sources of U.S. Military History, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1975, Supplement 1, 1981, Supplement 2, 1985, Supplement 3, 1993, Supplement 4, 1998.

(With Carol Brandt) The U.S. Army in Peacetime: Essays in Honor of the Bicentennial, Freedom Park Press, 1975.

(With Jacob W. Kipp) ACTA of the Washington ICMH Meeting: August, 1975, Military Affairs/Aerospace Historian Publishing, 1976.

(With Jacob W. Kipp) Soviet Aviation and Air Power, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1978.

Keneth P. Werrell, Eighth Air Force Bibliography: An Extended Essay and Listing of Published and Unpublished Materials, Military Affairs/Aerospace Historian Publishing, 1981.

(With George Ham) The Rise of the Wheat State: A History of Kansas Agriculture, 1861-1986, Sunflower University Press (Manhattan, KS), 1987.

(With daughter, Carol Lee Higham) George Stewart, Morning in Kansas: A Near-Frontier Boyhood, University Press of Kansas, 1988.

British Military History: A Supplement to Robin Higham's Guide to the Sources, Garland (New York, NY), 1988.

(Advisory editor) Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Air Force, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Thanos Veremis) The Metaxas Dictatorship: Aspects of Greece, 1936-1940, Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism (Athens, Greece), 1993.

(Advisory editor) World War II in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, with General Sources: A Handbook of Literature and Research, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1997.

(With John T. Greenwood and Von Hardesty) Russian Aviation and Air Power in the Twentieth Century, Frank Cass (Portland, OR), 1998.

The Writing of Official Military History, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1999.

Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Military History, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Official Military Historical Offices and Sources, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2000.

(With Frederick W. Kagan) The Military History of the Soviet Union, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Frederick W. Kagan) The Military History of Tsarist Russia, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Dennis E. Showalter) Researching World War I: A Handbook, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2003.

Also editor of ACTA of the Washington Meeting of the ICMH, 1985. Editor with Jacob W. Kipp, "International Military History" series, Garland, 1978—. Advisory editor, Technology and Culture, 1967-85; Military Affairs, editor, 1968-88, editor emeritus, 1989—; Aerospace Historian, editor, 1970-88, editor emeritus, 1988—; military advisory editor, University Press of Kentucky, 1970-75; editor, Mandarin Memo, 1974-80; Revue international d'histoire militaire, member of editorial board, 1976-85, president of consultative committee, 1981-85; editor, Journal of the West, 1977—; member of editorial advisory board, Defense Analysis, 1984—; member of advisory board, "Smithsonian History of Aviation" series, 1987—.

OTHER

Contributor to books, including Joseph Dunner, editor, Handbook of World History: Concepts and Issues, Philosophical Library, 1967; William Geffen, Command and Commanders in Modern Warfare, U.S.A.F. Academy, 1970; The Normandy Invasion in Retrospect, University Press of Kansas, 1971; Seemacht und Geschichte: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Friedrich Ruge, Deutsches Marine Institut, 1974; Dictionary of Business Biography, Butterworth & Co., 1982-84; ACTA of the ICMH at Athens, 1987, [Greece], 1988; Encyclopedia Britannica, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, and Proceedings of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and New York Academy of Sciences. Contributor to Christian Science Monitor, American Neptune, and other periodicals.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

The Overlooked Civilization; Options of Difficulties; Peacekeeping; BOAC—The Inside Story; For Want of a Spanner: Essays on the RAF; The Grecian Sea; A Handbook to Railway Research Worldwide (with Mark Parillo); Roads to 1940—The French and British Air Forces, for Texas A & M Press; The Invisible Infrastructure of the U.S. Civil War; The Defeat and Fall of Air Forces.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robin Higham is a scholar who has written prolifically in military history and the history of aviation. He has also been the editor of Military Affairs, Aerospace Historian, and Journal of the West. Speaking to Roger Adelson in the Historian, Higham explained: "As a historical generalist who looks at big problems to see how they have been handled, the entire past of humanity interests me."

In addition to histories, Higham has also written guides to the writing and researching of history. Writing in Air Power History, B. Franklin Cooling noted: "Higham gathered and edited several guides to official histories that remain the standard works in the field." In his book The Writing of Official Military History, Higham gathers essays on how government historians write the official histories of wars and military actions. Official histories have been written by governments around the world since the seventeenth century; they draw upon restricted and classified documents to present a detailed, thorough account of a war. But these histories are also prone to certain restrictions in what they can cover due to their limited scope and concern for maintaining security. The essays Higham offers, Cooling noted, "do provide an idea of the daunting task of official historians striving to provide accurate, useful, and objective evaluations in an environment of academic criticism, information security, political sensitivity, and, often, official disinterest."

Higham once told CA: "Having grown up in Britain with a father who was an author's agent and a mother with an interest in history and an uncle who wrote, I always had as a goal publication. My first published work was my honor's thesis from Harvard. I wish to preserve and explain historical phenomenon and help people use history to solve present problems rather than to repeat past mistakes.

"I have to do my work when I can grab the time. I consequently normally now have to write whenever there is a break of even a few minutes, but I prefer to be able to have four hours at a time. As I am usually working on several books at once, including also other people's, the circumstances behind any book are hard to define, but usually it is because I see an opportunity to answer a question that has not yet been dealt with. A number of my books have been published on both sides of the Atlantic in Britain and America; one is used as a text at the Royal Swedish Staff College in Stockholm and [ A Short History of Warfare ] has been translated into Hebrew for the Israelis as their official text for the history of warfare, and into Chinese as a text there. The British Rigid Airship was the basis for an English Granada-TV presentation some years ago.

"Young writers should not be afraid to put pen to paper. I have followed Nevil Shute's advice, get a typewriter that works—and use it constantly. I write seventy to eighty letters a week and also try to make my classroom work a careful selection of words. I started out being a Samuel Eliot Morison student at Harvard and I have always admired his breadth and readability."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Air Power History, spring, 2001, B. Franklin Cooling, review of The Writing of Official Military History, p. 66.

American Historical Review, February, 1988, Trumbull Higgins, review of Diary of a Disaster: British Aid to Greece, 1940-1941, p. 157.

Flying, February, 1976.

Historian, February, 1989, D. N. Lammers, review of Diary of a Disaster: British Aid to Greece, 1940-1941, p. 323; spring, 1998, Roger Adelson, "Interview with Robin Higham," p. 472.

Journal of American History, March, 1994, D'Ann Campbell, review of A Guide to the Sources of United States Military History, Supplement III, p. 1558.

Library Journal, July, 1981, Bobby Roberts, A Guide to the Sources of United States Military History, p. 1406; August, 1992, Raymond L. Puffer, review of A Guide to the Sources of United States Military History: Supplement III, p. 88.

Times Literary Supplement, November 10, 1966; July 21, 1972; November 3, 1972; July 3, 1987.