About the Author


    James W. Morrison

      



James W. Morrison is retired from a career of 30 years in the Department of Defense, including three years as a U.S. Army officer and nearly 27 years as a civilian executive in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on international affairs. He is a graduate of Indiana and Columbia Universities and the National War College.

       Jim is a writer of history and politics, essays, fiction, drama, and poetry. He had two books on international relations published while serving as a visiting fellow at the National Defense University in the early 1990s.

       Writing in retirement, his historical drama, Bedford Goes to War, won a local cultural-arts center contest and was performed in Bedford eight times over the years, one year as a fundraiser for the National D-Day Memorial.  

       His 2004 history, Bedford Goes to War: The Heroic Story of a Small Virginia Community in World War II, was nominated for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards and was selected as one of five finalists for the nonfiction People’s Choice Award in 2005. The book is in its third edition.

        In 2014, he published his first novel, Class of 1940: Coming of Age in World War II. He has adapted this into a screenplay.

       In 2017, he published a collection of pieces, titled Shorts in a Bunch. 

       Jim is a past president of the 107-year-old, statewide, Virginia Writers Club, its Roanoke Valley Writers chapter, and the Lake Writers at Smith Mountain Lake. 

       He has served as a volunteer guide at the National D-Day Memorial. He is vice chairman of the Franklin County Library Foundation, a member of Bedford’s American Legion Post 54, and an active member of his church. Jim  and his wife, Edie, live at Smith Mountain Lake in southwest Virginia. They have two grown children and three grand-children.  


              Published or Performed Works by the Author


  • Vladimir Zhirinovskiy: An Assessment of a Russian Ultranationalist (1994, National Defense Univ. Press)

  • NATO Expansion and Alternative Future Security Alignments (1995, National Defense Univ. Press)

  • “Europe” (with Jeffrey Simon and Charles Barry) in Strategic Assessment 1995 (1995, INSS/National Defense University Press)

  • Bedford Goes to War (2000, a historical drama)

  • Bedford Goes to War: The Heroic Story of a Small Virginia Community in World War II (history, first edition 2004, second edition 2006, third edition 2013)

  • “Bedford County and D-Day” in Bedford Images, Vol. 2, Celebrating 250 Years of History (history, 2004, Bedford Museum)

  • Class of 1940: Coming of Age in World War II (historical novel, 2014)

  • Shorts in a Bunch: Amusing Anecdotes, Tall Tales, Eclectic Essays, Heroic Histories, Playful Poems & Plays