Mark Grimsley is an American professor of History at Ohio State University. His 1995 book, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865, earned second place in the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize category.
Although primarily an academic historian, Grimsley has written extensively in magazines of popular history. In 1980 he published his first article, in Civil War Times Illustrated. He has since published over sixty articles for general readers. After earning his doctorate, the History Department at Ohio State University hired Grimsley as an assistant professor. Grimsley attained the rank of associate professor in 1997. In 1999 he received the Ohio State University Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award for excellence in the classroom. From 2008 to 2010, Grimsley received a visiting professor appointment to the United States Army War College as the Harold Keith Johnson Chair of Military History. At the conclusion of his Army War College appointment he received the Department of the Army Outstanding Civilian Service Award. Grimsley served as an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1999-2007.
Research interests
Grimsley is a military historian with a main concentration in the U.S. Civil War. His thematic emphases include race and war in the American military experience as well as the problem of moral judgment in war.
""Wars for the American South: The First and Second Reconstructions Considered as Insurgencies." Civil War History 58 :6-36.
"Prejudice Against Popular History: The Costs and Benefits of Holding the Course." Historically Speaking 13 :9-11.
Book Chapters and Essays
"Success and Failure in Civil War Armies: Clues from Organizational Culture," in Warfare and Culture in World History, ed. Wayne E. Lee, 115-141.
"'A Lack of Confidence': Benjamin F. Butler,” in Steven E. Woodworth, ed. Grant’s Lieutenants: From Chattanooga to Appomattox, 105-132.
"'More Than ‘A First Rate Clerk’: Henry W. Halleck,'"in Steven E. Woodworth, ed. Grant’s Lieutenants: From Chattanooga to Appomattox, 195-216.
"Remorseless, Revolutionary Struggle: A People’s War," in Aaron Sheehan-Dean, ed. Struggle for a Vast Future: The American Civil War. Foreword by James M. McPherson, 97-112.
"'A Very Long Shadow': Race, Atrocity, and the American Civil War," in Gregory J.W. Urwin, ed., Black Flag Over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War, 231-244.
Other
Grimsley maintains an academic blog titled Blog Them Out of the Stone Age and contributes to a blog titled Civil Warriors with Ethan Rafuse.
Personal interest
Suffering from bipolar disorder since 1986, Grimsley converses openly about his illness, and has a blog, Facing the Demon, dedicated to furthering the discussion about his illness.
