Gambone, Michael D. 1963-

PERSONAL:

Born 1963; married; children: Mike, Jr. Education: University of Chicago, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Exeter Township, PA. Office—Department of History, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, P.O. Box 730, Kutztown, PA 19530. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Professor and writer. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Kutztown, PA, assistant professor of history. Military service: U.S. Army, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, NC, 1985-88; Pennsylvania Army National Guard, 1995-97.

WRITINGS:

Between Patronage and Partnership: The Evolution of U.S.-Nicaraguan Relations, 1953-1961, University of Chicago (Chicago, IL), 1993.

Eisenhower, Somoza, and the Cold War in Nicaragua, 1953-1961, Praeger (Westport, CT), 1997.

Capturing the Revolution: The United States, Central America, and Nicaragua, 1961-1972, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2001.

(Editor) Documents of American Diplomacy: From the American Revolution to the Present, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2002.

The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

The son of an Air Force serviceman, Michael D. Gambone gained an early appreciation for military history and American foreign policy. After serving in the U.S. Army in the late 1980s, he earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago, choosing the evolution of U.S.-Nicaraguan relations as his dissertation topic. Gambone has gone on to become a professor of history at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, teaching American history and researching topics related to foreign relations, with a particular interest in Nicaragua. He has written several books in his area of research, including Eisenhower, Somoza, and the Cold War in Nicaragua, 1953-1961 and Capturing the Revolution: The United States, Central America, and Nicaragua, 1961-1972. Presidential Studies Quarterly contributor Meena Bose wrote that Eisenhower, Somoza, and the Cold War in Nicaragua "is filled with detail on the policies of each country in the 1950s, and specialists in U.S.-Latin American relations will find this analysis useful in explaining the range of issues that influenced those policies…. As a whole, this book is well organized and contains much information on both countries during the Eisenhower administration."

In 2005's The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society, Gambone shifted gears to write about the experiences many World War II veterans had returning to the United States with a continuing desire to serve. During the course of the Iraq War in the early 2000s, Gambone felt a similar urge to lend his expertise in service to his country. He volunteered as a civilian military advisor and spent six months in Mosul with Alaska's 172nd Stryker Brigade. Gambone returned to the United States with a new appreciation for his occupation. He told Christopher Baxter of Allentown, Pennsylvania's Morning Call: "It's amazing to me I'm living the same history I was writing about [in The Greatest Generation Comes Home] after World War II because those guys came back with that same drive. You get out of a war and you have a second chance and time to do things and you're motivated to serve."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Morning Call (Allentown, PA), June 21, 2006, Christopher Baxter, "Man Returns from War ‘Motivated to Serve’: Kutztown University Professor Was An Adviser in Mosul, Iraq."

Presidential Studies Quarterly, June, 1999, Meena Bose, review of Eisenhower, Somoza, and the Cold War in Nicaragua, 1953-1961, p. 490.