Our guest today is the gracious, hardworking William A. Taylor of Angelo State University, where he is the Lee Drain Endowed University Professor of Global Security (say that fast five times!). A Naval Academy graduate and Marine veteran, Bill began life in Greenville, South Carolina, but grew up in Bowie, Maryland, and Dallas, Texas. Bill was doomed to be a historian after as a kid interloping into a 20-person wargame of the Alamo at a gaming convention, where his Mexican Army infantry unit staged a sneak attack on an unassuming Alamo wall and took out Davy Crockett, much to the surprise of the adult war gamers around him. With this tactical success and a Disneyesque coonskin hat as a trophy, Bill ultimately landed at Annapolis, followed by a stint in the Marine Corps, then earned his PhD in history at George Washington University, working under the late Ron Spector. He's authored too many books to list, but his Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for University Military Training after World War II (Texas A&M) and The All-Volunteer Force: Fifty Years of Service (Kansas) are representative of his scholarship He is also the series editor for Studies in Civil-Military Relations at the University Press of Kansas and for Marine Corps History and Amphibious Warfare at the Naval Institute Press. So, school with the Navy, service with the Marines, and studying the Army - Bill now has a lot of Air Force members in his courses at Angelo State, where he chairs the Department of Security Studies and Criminal Justice. He's a busy guy.

Bill is also one of the nicest guys in the military history community, as you'll hear in this delightful chat: We'll talk getting into the Naval Academy, standing up a new program in security studies, family tradition of military service, Rush, Popeye's Fried Chicken, and the value of mentors and paying it forward - join us for another good one!

Shoutout to Bubba's BBQ and Armenta's Cafe, both in San Angelo, Texas!

Rec.: 05/05/2026