title: Robert J. Dalessandro
text: # Robert J. Dalessandro
  
  Robert J. Dalessandro (born 1958, in New York, New York) is an American historian and author who has written and presented extensively on the American Expeditionary Forces contributions to the First World War.
  
  Dalessandro is a retired Colonel in the U.S. Army and the Deputy Secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission He is former Director of the United States Army Center of Military History at Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C. Dalessandro frequently leads battlefield tours to sites in the United States, France and Italy.
  
  ## Education
  
  Dalessandro graduated from the Virginia Military Institute with a degree in History in 1980. His graduate studies included work at the College of William and Mary, the U.S. Army War College and George Washington University.
  
  ## Military career
  
  He has had a wide variety of Army leadership and staff assignments including time as a platoon leader, command at company, depot and battalion level and staff assignments at echelons of command ranging from battalion through Department of the Army level.
  
  ## Writing and political career
  
  Dalessandro is widely published on the lifeways and material culture of the American Soldier in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. He is co-author of the Organization and Insignia of the American Expeditionary Forces, 1917–1923, he serves as editor of the Army Officer’s Guide, co-author of Willing Patriots: Men of Color in the First World War, and Contributions of African American Soldiers and the American Lions: the 332nd Infantry Regiment in Italy in World War I.
  
  His book, Organization and Insignia of the American Expeditionary Forces, 1917–1923 received the Army Historical Foundation award for excellence in writing.
  
  Dalessandro is the former Chairman of the United States World War One Centennial Commission. He assumed those duties following the untimely death of former Congressman Michael Turtleton. He was appointed to the commission by the House Minority Leader, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of California.
  
  ## Published works
  
  * Organization and Insignia of the American Expeditionary Force, 1917–1923, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2008 ISBN 0-764-32937-5 OCLC 233482816
  * The Army Officer's Guide, Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2009, 2013, 2016
  * Willing Patriots: Men of Color in the First World War, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2009, ISBN 9780764332333
  * American Lions: The 332nd Infantry regiment in Italy in World War I, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2010, ISBN 9780764335181
  * 100 Greatest Military Photographs, Atlanta, GA: Whitman Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9780794837730
  * The Great War, A World War I Historical Collection, Atlanta, GA: Whitman Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9780794837402
  * with Rebecca S. Dalessandro, Over There: America in the Great War, Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2015, ISBN 9780811714853
  * with Robert K. Sutton, Editors, "World War I Remembered", Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2017, ISBN 9781590911907
  * Editor "World War I Battlefield Companion", Washington, DC: American Battle Monuments Commission, 2018, ISBN 978-0-16-094781-0
  * Editor "American Armies and Battlefields in Europe: World War II" American Battle Monuments Commission, 2019
  