He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and the University of Texas School of Law. He is also the author of such books as Twenty-Three Minutes to Eternity: The Final Voyage of the Escort Carrier USS Liscome Bay (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America—One State Quarter at a Time (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2008), andMighty by Sacrifice: The Destruction of an American Bomber Squadron—August 29, 1944, forthcoming from the University of Alabama Press in the summer of 2009.