With The American Experiment on the Precipice, It's Good To Know Our Shared Origin Story: A Conversation with Historian Patrick O'Donnell

As divided as we are today about the state of our current politics and the debate about facts, it seems that at least we should be able to agree about our shared history. And yet even that is debated today. 

When did America begin? Who gets credit, and how did it shape us? 

Patrick O’Donnell is one of our most distinguished military historians and he always trying to answer these questions.  He is author of twelve books, including The Unknowns and Washington’s Immortals. and served as a combat historian in a Marine rifle platoon during the Battle of Fallujah and has dedicated himself to understanding the truth about our history, particularly our military history, and it’s importance in helping us better understand who we really are and where we come from. His latest is The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners Who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware 

My conversation with Patrick O'Donnell:

History in Plain Sight: WWI and the Unknown Soldiers

Someone wrote a national column last year suggesting that whoever we elect to office should at the very least be able to pass a basic high school test in American history. The fact is, we all should be able to. If only because the past is prologue. Because where we are as a nation today, and the problems and privileges we embrace is a direct result of all that history.

Few have done more to help us understand our military history than Patrick O'Donnell.

In his latest book, The Unknowns: The Untold Story of America’s Unknown Soldier and WWI’s Most Decorated Heroes Who Brought Him Home, Patrick takes us back 100 years to a story that, while unique to itself, represents the fundamental reverence we should have as a nation for those that gave their last full measure of devotion.

Campaign 1776 - The War That We Almost Lost

On this day, upon which we celebrate the birth of the “American Experiment,” it’s important to remember that it was not preordained.

In spite of today's overheated patriotic rhetoric, the revolution, the victory of the Continental Army, the success of Washington and the country that followed, could have easily gone another direction. There were many times when the revolution might have failed. (Given the state of our politics today, that may not have been such a bad idea)

Just as important and just as surprising are that there are still so many untold stories from that effort. Stories that, particularly on this day, prove instructive, informative and most of all inspirational.

Patrick O’Donnell is the master of telling the stories of our military heroes and as O’Donnell shows us in Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution, it was the revolutionary generation that was indeed our greatest.

My conversation with Patrick O'Donnell:

The Boys of Pointe du Hoc

On June 6th 1984, Ronald Reagan gave one of his most powerful speeches marking “the Boys of Pointe du Hoc,” who took on one of the toughest missions of D-Day. Now, acclaimed military historian Patrick O’Donnell takes us up close and personal with these men who led the way across Europe.

O’Donnell has collected oral histories and has woven them together as the spine of  his new work Dog Company.   It shall forever preserve the men and their mission.

My conversation with Patrick K. O’Donnell:

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