Tom Carhart, Ph.D., graduated from West Point in 1966 and subsequently served as an infantry platoon leader with 101^st Airborne Division in Vietnam and as an Advisor to the South Vietnamese forces. He was awarded two Purple Hearts for wounds suffered in combat. After  teaching French at West Point, he left the Army and received a law degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He subsequently served as Editor of European Taxation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

        Upon returning to the United States, Tom studied economics at the Rand Graduate School while working for the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. He then returned to Europe as an international corporate lawyer at the Archibald law firm in Brussels representing multinational corporations before the European Economic Community. In later years, Tom again worked for the Army as a civilian policy analyst and historian. In 1998, he received his Ph.D. in American and military history from Princeton University.

        Tom is the author of a number of books: Battles and Campaigns in Vietnam (1984), The Offering (1987), Battlefront Vietnam (1991), Iron Soldiers (1994), West Point Warriors (2002), and Lost Triumph: Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why it Failed (2005). Currently, Tom has recently completed a book on the history of the Judge Advocate General Corps for the Department of the Army and is researching his next commercial book.

        He presently lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two children.