Craig L. Symonds

Uncommon card · No. 126972

Craig Lee Symonds (31 December 1946 – 13 October 2026) was an American naval historian, who was the Distinguished Visiting Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History from 2017 to 2020 at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He was also professor emeritus at the United States Naval Academy, where he served as chairman of the history department. Symonds was a distinguished historian of the American Civil War, World War II, and maritime history. His book Lincoln and His Admirals won the Lincoln Prize. His book Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings was the 2015 recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature, and his book Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay won the Gilder-Lehrman Military History prize. In 2023, he was awarded the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.

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