Lieutenant Colonel Charles P. Neimeyer, USMC (ret.), an adjunct instructor at UMUC, serves as civilian professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Neimeyer earned his doctorate in history, with distinction, from Georgetown University. He served previously with the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Naval Academy, and on the military staff of the President of the United States.  Charles P. Neimeyer is the author of The Revolutionary War and America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army.  He is also the editor of  On the Corps: USMC Wisdom for the Pages of the Marine Corps Gazette and Proceedings.

According to the book description of The Revolutionary War, “Nearly everyone in the U.S. has studied the Revolutionary War. Too often, however, historians of the Revolution focus on the activity of the army without noticing what was taking place inside the army. Making liberal use of diaries and correspondence by the soldiers and their families, Charles P. Neimeyer tells the stories of the men and women who fought for the young country's independence. Sometimes starting off as rag-tag groups of men shooting off their muskets at geese just for the thrill of the sound, the soldiers became more disciplined and focused. The army recruited a significant number of African American soldiers, who fought side by side with whites. Women also fought and served in the army, either masquerading as male soldiers or providing support for army operations in camp and on the march. Suffering through times of numbing cold and starvation where men boiled their shoes for food, the sheer perseverance of the soldiers in the ranks ultimately won the war for independence. Presenting stories from letters and diaries of the men and women of the time, this volume reveals the stories of fear, exhaustion, hard work, grief, and exhilaration of the people in the camps and on the march.”

According to the book description of America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army, “One of the images Americans hold most dear is that of the drum-beating, fire-eating Yankee Doodle Dandy rebel, overpowering his British adversaries through sheer grit and determination. The myth of the classless, independence-minded farmer or hard-working artisan-turned-soldier is deeply ingrained in the national psyche.

Charles Neimeyer here separates fact from fiction, revealing for the first time who really served in the army during the Revolution and why. His conclusions are startling. Because the army relied primarily on those not connected to the new American aristorcracy, the African Americans, Irish, Germans, Native Americans, laborers-for-hire, and "free white men on the move" who served in the army were only rarely alltruistic patriots driven by a vision of liberty and national unity.

Bringing to light the true composition of the enlisted ranks, the relationships of African-Americans and of Native Americans to the army, and numerous acts of mutiny, desertion, and resistance against officers and government, Charles Patrick Neimeyer here provides the first comprehensive and historically accurate portrait of the Continental soldier.”