Cutler, Thomas J. 1947–

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Cutler, Thomas J. 1947–

PERSONAL:

Born 1947; married; wife's name Deborah W.

CAREER:

U.S. Navy, retired lieutenant commander; Navy War College, Annapolis, MD, professor of strategy and policy and associate chair of history department.

WRITINGS:

Brown Water, Black Berets: Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 1988.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October, 1944, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Jack Sweetman) The U.S. Naval Academy: An Illustrated History, 2nd edition, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 1995.

Dutton's Nautical Navigation, 15th edition, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 2004.

(With wife, Deborah W. Cutler) Dictionary of Naval Terms, 6th edition, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 2005.

A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy, Naval Institute Press/Naval Historical Center (Annapolis, MD), 2005.

(With Deborah W. Cutler) Dictionary of Naval Abbreviations, 4th edition, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 2005.

Navcivguide: A Handbook for Civilians in the United States Navy, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Retired U.S. Navy officer Thomas J. Cutler left active duty to teach at the Navy War College. He is also the author of several books on the Navy and the military, including accounts of battles and guides about military life, some of which he wrote with his wife, Deborah. His first book, Brown Water, Black Berets: Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam, "is a very readable concise history" about the Navy's role in the Vietnam war, according to Jimmie Aaron Kepler on the blog Kepler's Military History Book Reviews. Kepler appreciated that Cutler combines historical facts with more personal accounts of individuals fighting in the conflict. The author is comprehensive in his coverage, taking readers back to the beginnings of America's involvement in Vietnam. He then discusses operations that occurred both on coastal areas and inland waterways, going into detail concerning the cooperative efforts of the Navy with the 9th Infantry Division to capture a strategic delta.

With The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October, 1944, Cutler provides a thorough account of the last major ocean battle between the Japanese and the Americans at the end of World War II. At this point of the war, the tide had turned in favor of the United States, and it was only a matter of time before the Americans would win the war. However, the Japanese were not admitting defeat as they mounted an all-out effort to prevent General Douglas MacArthur's return to the Philippines. Cutler calls the resulting clash one of the greatest sea battles of all time. So much fire power was being mounted on either side that if the Americans had lost it would have been a cataclysmic blow. The United States might still eventually have won the war, but at a much heavier cost to America. In his analysis of the battle, Cutler goes into great detail, defining the capabilities of each ship that was deployed and remarking on the strategies used. In particular, he writes about what he considers a huge mistake on the part of Admiral William Halsey, who allowed his part of the fleet to be lured away from the main battle in pursuit of a decoy force led by Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa. Because he did this, Halsey left beachhead ships on the Philippine's coast unprotected, which could have meant the loss of those ships had they not put up their own heroic fight. A Publishers Weekly critic appreciated Cutler's narrative skills, resulting in a "suspenseful" book that could have been dry in less adept hands. "His material is exciting and his analysis of it is thoughtful and generous," Phoebe-Lou Adams similarly asserted in her Atlantic Monthly assessment.

Cutler also is the author of books about the Navy's history, traditions, and terminology. For example, he was selected to write the fifteenth edition of Dutton's Nautical Navigation, a "classic reference," according to a contributor on the Maryland Nautical Web site, that has been used by sailors for more than seven decades. With his wife, Deborah, Cutler also compiled the Dictionary of Naval Terms and Dictionary of Naval Abbreviations. A Reference & Research Book News critic noted in a review of the former that this reference tool is useful not only for sailors but also for journalists and others interested in learning the correct terminology used in the profession.

A number of reviewers found Cutler's volume A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy to be of particular interest. Instead of taking a chronological approach, the author organizes his material into thematic sections. These include "Traditions," "Commitment," and "Transitions." In "Traditions" the author explains how many of the Navy's time-honored traditions came to be, including why so many ships over time have been named Enterprise, and where expressions such as "Don't tread on me" were coined. The next section describes what the life of a sailor is like on a day-to-day basis, while the last section, "Transitions," relates important developments in naval history, such as the change from wooden to iron ships and the deployment of submarines in battle, and discusses how these changes affected the Navy. The author ends with a chapter on colloquial language use in the Navy. The goal of the book is not to present a traditional history but rather "to imbue recruits with a sense of the historic tradition" of the Navy, as Maxine Turner reported in the Historian. Turner went on to assert that the results prove that Cutler is both "an accomplished writer" and "a gifted teacher." Tom Miller, writing for Military.com, added that A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy is "crisply-written and compellingly told," reporting that "the Navy has, in fact, adopted A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy for issue to all new sailors."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlantic Monthly, September, 1994, Phoebe-Lou Adams, review of The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October, 1944, p. 113.

Historian, fall, 2006, Maxine Turner, review of A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy.

Journal of Military History, January, 1989, Clarence Wunderlin, review of Brown Water, Black Berets: Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam, p. 113.

Library Journal, May 15, 1988, Edward Gibson, review of Brown Water, Black Berets, p. 80.

Publishers Weekly, March 25, 1988, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Brown Water, Black Berets, p. 57; July 4, 1994, review of The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October, 1944, p. 49.

Reference & Research Book News, December, 1988, review of Brown Water, Black Berets, p. 4; February, 2004, review of Dutton's Nautical Navigation, 15th edition, p. 257; May, 2005, review of Dictionary of Naval Abbreviations, 4th edition, p. 298; August, 2005, review of Dictionary of Naval Terms, 6th edition, p. 287.

SciTech Book News, March, 2004, review of Dutton's Nautical Navigation, p. 180.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), September, 1994, review of The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October, 1944, p. 6; December 4, 1994, review of The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October, 1944, p. 13; February 25, 1996, review of The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October, 1944, p. 2.