william williams

William Appleman "Bill" Williams (June 12, 1921 – March 5, 1990) was one of the 20th century's most prominent revisionist historians of American diplomacy, and has been called "the favorite historian of the Middle American New Left." He achieved the height of his influence while on the faculty of the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Biography

Early years

William Appleman Williams was born and raised in the small town of Atlantic, Iowa. He attended Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri, then earned a degree in engineering at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. He graduated and was commissioned an ensign in 1945. After serving in the South Pacific as an executive officer aboard a Landing Ship Medium, he was stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas where he made plans to become a aviator like his father (who had been in the Army Air Corps until he died in a plane crash in 1929).

A wartime back injury generated enormous pain for him and stopped his chances at becoming a naval aviator after the war. He requested a medical discharge from the Navy in 1946 and moved to