The Price of Valor: The LIfe of Audie Murphy, America's Most Decorated Hero of WWII
Nov 06, 2019 12:00 PM
Dr. David A. Smith
The Price of Valor: The LIfe of Audie Murphy, America's Most Decorated Hero of WWII

Dr. David A. Smith is a senior lecturer in American history at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and a Fleet Professor in Strategy for the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.  He received his undergraduate degree from Texas State University in San Marcos, and his Ph.D. in modern American history from the University of Missouri.

He is the author The Price of Valor: The Life of Audie Murphy, America’s Most Decorated Hero of WWII, George S. Patton, A Biography, and various other books and essays.  His next book, Admiral George Dewey and the Rise of American Naval Power in the Pacific will be published next year by the US Naval Institute Press.

He also writes about art and culture in history and is the author of Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy.  His essays on art, culture, history and politics have appeared in the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman.  From 2010 to 2018 he wrote a weekly column on arts and culture that appeared in the Waco Tribune-Herald, and now is the host and writer of “David & Art” on KWBU-FM, Waco’s NPR station.

He has spoken at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and to civic organizations ranging from art galleries to the Rotary Club, the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, the Fort Worth World Affairs Council, and the Audie Murphy Museum & World War II Museum.

He has won awards for his teaching at Baylor and at the University of Missouri.