Fry, Joseph A. 1947-

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Fry, Joseph A. 1947-

PERSONAL:

Born 1947. Education: Davis and Elkins College, B.A., 1969; University of Virginia, M.A., 1970, Ph.D., 1974.

ADDRESSES:

Home—NV. Office—History Department, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Pkwy., Box 455020, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5020. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Historian and educator. University of Nevada, Las Vegas, professor of history, beginning 1975.

WRITINGS:

Henry S. Sanford: Diplomacy and Business in Nineteenth-Century America, University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1982.

John Tyler Morgan and the Search for Southern Autonomy, University of Tennessee Press (Knoxville, TN), 1992.

Dixie Looks Abroad: The South and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1789-1973, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 2002.

Debating Vietnam: Fulbright, Stennis, and Their Senate Hearings, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2006.

Contributor to academic journals, including Diplomatic History and Pacific Historical Review. Series editor for "Biographies in American Foreign Policy," Rowman & Littlefield. Member of the editorial board for Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

SIDELIGHTS:

Joseph A. Fry, a professor of history, writes widely on U.S. foreign relations, U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the American South after 1850. In Dixie Looks Abroad: The South and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1789-1973, Fry examines the South's role in foreign affairs from the administration of George Washington to the Vietnam War. The author contends that southerners used foreign policy issues to promote sectional and regional interests, and he explores how southern motives and actions have influenced the nation's foreign policy decisions. In Dixie Looks Abroad, observed Journal of Southern History contributor Anthony Gaughan, Fry "demonstrates that the South played a far larger role in U.S. foreign policy than is commonly assumed. Equally important, he reveals that foreign affairs played a more significant role in southern history than the region's historians have usually acknowledged."

Debating Vietnam: Fulbright, Stennis, and Their Senate Hearings focuses on a series of public inquiries held during the Vietnam War. In the work, Fry looks at the 1966 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, led by Arkansas senator J. William Fulbright, which advocated a negotiated settlement to the combat, and the 1967 Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, led by Mississippi senator John C. Stennis, which promoted a more aggressive approach to ending the war. "Vivid retellings of testimonies by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Maxwell Taylor, and others enliven the text," noted Library Journal critic Karl Helicher.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Journal of Southern History, August, 2003, Anthony Gaughan, review of Dixie Looks Abroad: The South and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1789-1973, p. 678.

Library Journal, August 1, 2006, Karl Helicher, review of Debating Vietnam: Fulbright, Stennis, and Their Senate Hearings, p. 103.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2007, review of Debating Vietnam.