Partnering with the Viola Foundation in December 2011, the Department of History at West Point sought to create not just the best military history textbook ever, but the best textbook ever. Just six months later, the two organizations assembled nearly fifty of the world’s leading military historians and outlined a plan to craft a narrative that would stretch across 2,000 years of human history.
By December 2012, seventy-one chapters of text were underway, and Rowan Technology was formed to manage the rapidly growing endeavor. Teams of historians, editors, cartographers, designers, and developers from New York to Nebraska assembled the various authors' text into a digital format and outfitted it with interactive features. The audacious effort produced 500 new geo-referenced maps, never-before-seen animations of history's most famous battles, and interactive hotspots that users tap to learn additional details about a painting, photograph, or other primary source. The reader becomes fully immersed in the learning experience as their visual, auditory, and tactile learning centers are all engaged.
During the summer semester of 2013, students beta tested several chapters in the classroom, and in the fall, the entire first half of The West Point History of Warfare became available to 1,100 West Point cadets. The response was and continues to be overwhelmingly positive from both students and faculty alike.
See a comprehensive list of chapters and authors.