Charles E. Brodine Jr. is a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command and associate editor of the Command’s series The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History. He is also a coauthor of Interpreting Old Ironsides: An Illustrated Guide to the USS Constitution (Naval Historical Center, 2007) and Against All Odds: U.S. Sailors in the War of 1812 (Naval Historical Center, 2004).
Colonel Glen Butler, U.S. Marine Corps, holds a master’s degree in military studies from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. A naval aviator, he commanded the Marine Corps Air Station at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, and served two tours in Iraq with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 169.
Captain Shannon R. Butler retired after 27 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy and completed her Ph.D. in history at the University of Arizona in 2008. She is the author of several articles and book chapters dealing with Soviet-American relations during the Cold War, and is currently working on an essay concerning the Port Chicago explosion of July 1944 and its effects on desegregation in the U.S. Navy.
Margherita M. Desy is the historian for the Naval History and Heritage Command Detachment Boston, working with the USS Constitution. She has published in the Nautical Research Journal and was a contributor to the Encyclopedia of American Maritime Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes. She currently teaches at Tufts University for the museum studies program in the Graduate and Professional Studies Department.
Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert became the 30th Chief of Naval Operations in September 2011. The 1975 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy spent more than a quarter-century in the submarine service, then commanded the 7th Fleet and later, U.S. Fleet Forces Command. He is the 1992 winner of the Vice Admiral Stockdale Award for inspirational leadership.
Kevin D. McCranie is a professor of strategy and policy at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He is the author of Utmost Gallantry: The U.S. and Royal Navies at Sea in the War of 1812 (Naval Institute Press, 2011) and Admiral Lord Keith and the Naval War Against Napoleon (University Press of Florida, 2006).
Louis Arthur Norton, University of Connecticut professor emeritus, has published extensively on maritime history. His books include Joshua Barney: Hero of the Revolutionary War and 1812 (Naval Institute Press, 2000) and Captains Contentious: The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine (University of South Carolina Press, 2009). Two of his articles earned the Gerald E. Morris Prize for maritime historiography and appeared in The Log of Mystic Seaport.
Craig L. Symonds is professor emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy and is the author or editor of 25 books on naval and Civil War history, including Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (Oxford University Press, 2005), winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize; and most recently, The Battle of Midway (Oxford University Press, 2011).