The Haydn Williams WWII Memorial Legacy Lecture is an annual public lecture series featuring preeminent historians and scholars speaking on the lasting significance and impact of World War II on America and the world.
Featuring award-winning author Ian W. Toll
November 9, 2022
9:00 a.m. ET.
Lincoln Hall Auditorium, National Defense University
Washington, DC
Ian W. Toll is the author of Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944–1945 (Pacific War Trilogy, Volume 3). Other titles in the trilogy include Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942 (Volume 1) and The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944 (Volume 2). Ian’s previous book was Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy (W.W. Norton, 2006). Six Frigates won broad critical acclaim and was selected for the Samuel Eliot Morison Award and the William E. Colby Award. Pacific Crucible received the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction in 2012. In 2019, Toll was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Award by the USS Constitution Museum.
Prior to beginning work on Six Frigates in 2002, Ian had been a Wall Street analyst, a Federal Reserve financial analyst, and a political aide and speechwriter.
He received his undergraduate degree in American History at Georgetown University (1989) and his Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (1995).
Toll has also served as a juror for the National Endowment for the Humanities, a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department, and a lecturer at the Naval War College. Ian lives in New York.
The Haydn Williams World War II Memorial Legacy Lecture is made possible through the generous endowment of the late Ambassador F. Haydn Williams, a WWII veteran, former chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission’s WWII Memorial Site and Design Committee, and chairman emeritus of Friends of the National World War II Memorial.