Robert Cowley is an Americanmilitary historian, who writes on topics in American and Europeanmilitary history ranging from theCivil War throughWorld War II. He has held several senior positions in book and magazine publishing and is the foundingeditor of the award-winningMHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History; Cowley has also written extensively and edited three collections ofessays incounterfactual history known asWhat If?

As part of his research he has traveled the entire length of theWestern Front, from theNorth Sea to theSwiss border.

Cowley is the son of prominent writer and literary criticMalcolm Cowley and Muriel Mauer.^{[citation needed]} He attendedPhillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, graduating in 1952.^{[citation needed]} Thereafter, he earned an A.B. degree in history in 1956 fromHarvard College in Massachusetts.^[1]

He was married to Blair Cowley; they later divorced and she remarried to artistPaul Resika. They had two daughters, Elizabeth and Miranda. Miranda Cowley, is married to film producer and directorBruno Heller, son of screenwriterLukas Heller and grandson of political philosopherHermann Heller. Cowley was married toSusan Cheever, daughter of novelistJohn Cheever from 1967 to 1975.^[2] He married Edith Lorillard, daughter ofElaine Lorillard, who founded theNewport Jazz Festival, in 1978.^[1] They have two daughters, Olivia Wassenaar and Savannah Cowley.^[3]

• 1918: Gamble for Victory. The Greatest Attack of World War I, by Robert Cowley, New York, Macmillan Books, 1964.OCLC 3860691
• Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age, by Malcolm Cowley and Robert Cowley, New York, Scribner, 1966.
• The Rulers of Britain, by Robert Cowley, New York, Stonehenge Press, 1982,ISBN 0-86706-068-9.
• Experience of War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 1993,ISBN 0-440-50553-4
• The Reader's Companion to Military History, by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1996,ISBN 978-0-618-12742-9
• No End Save Victory: Perspectives on World War II, edited by Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001,ISBN 978-0-425-18338-0OCLC 44932120
• With My Face to the Enemy: Perspectives on the Civil War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001,ISBN 978-0-7126-7946-6OCLC 45375993
• West Point: Two Centuries of Honor and Tradition, edited by Robert Cowley and Thomas Guinzburg, New York: Warner Books, 2002.ISBN 0-446-53018-2OCLC 49748770
• The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 2003,ISBN 978-1-84413-419-9
• The Cold War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 2006,ISBN 978-0-8129-6716-6
• What If? The World’s Most Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 1999,ISBN 0-425-17642-8OCLC 41338197
• What If? 2 Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001,ISBN 0-399-14795-0
• What Ifs? of American History, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2003,ISBN 0-399-15091-9

• Random House Author Spotlight
• The Lessons of War Sell in Peacetime,William H. Honan,The New York Times, December 19, 1988.
• Generals, Battlefields, and What Raleigh Said, Richard Bernstein,The New York Times, December 18, 1996.
• Review: The Reader's Companion to Military History, Andrew Krepinevich, Foreign Affairs, May/June 1997.
• Historians Warming To Games Of 'What If',William H. Honan,The New York Times, January 7, 1998.
• Word for Word: Historical 'What Ifs?'; Annie Could've Gotten Her Gun And Blown Away the Kaiser, David Clay Large,The New York Times, May 10, 1998.
• Books in Brief: Nonfiction, David Murray,The New York Times, October 17, 1999.
• Making Books; The 'What Ifs' That Fascinate, Martin Arnold,The New York Times, December 21, 2000.
• It All Could Have Been Different, Chuck Leddy, San Francisco Chronicle, September 9, 2003.
• Imagine, Laura Miller, New York Times Book Review, September 5, 2004.

• Living people
• American editors
• American military historians
• American male non-fiction writers
• American military writers
• American historians of World War II
• Harvard College alumni
• Phillips Exeter Academy alumni
• 20th-century American writers

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from January 2025
• Year of birth missing (living people)