Cathal J. Nolan

Cathal J. Nolan is Director Emeritus of the International History Institute at the Pardee School of Global Studies in Boston. He has taught military history and international relations at leading universities in Canada and the United States, receiving multiple research and teaching awards, including the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History (formerly Guggenheim) for his critically acclaimed The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars have been Won and Lost (Oxford UP, 2017). He publishes future military fiction under the pen name Kali Altsoba, whose Orion War series has now reached seven novels.

He has guest lectured or consulted in places ranging from Argentina and Afghanistan to Britain and Canada, and across the United States. He consults regularly on military history for the PBS series NOVA as well as for independent documentaries. He taught for two memorable years in rural northern Nigeria, then a welcoming place but where Boko Haram terrorists today kidnap students and burn schools and people. More recently he took BU Global Water Brigades teams to dig PVC pipeline trench and build potable other water infrastructure in mountain villages in rural Honduras.

His Allure of Battle has been recognized as "the best book on military history in the English-speaking world distinguished by its scholarship, its contribution to the literature, and its appeal to both a general and an academic audience." Professor Andrew Roberts said of it: “The judges were unanimous in choosing The Allure of Battle for its combination of an arresting overarching theme, extraordinary breadth of knowledge of warfare over the centuries, first-class scholarly erudition, and ability to speak to the general reader. There was also a moral quality to the work that was unusually powerful.”

His most recent book is Mercy: Humanity in War (Oxford UP 2024).