John Keegan, a leading historian of warfare, has died at the age of 78. Keegan taught at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst for many years and wrote a number of books on military history topics.

Keegan’s most famous work was The Face of Battle (1976), which helped establish a “New Military History” examining warfare from the soldiers’ perspective. This approach to military history drew heavily on social history methods, leading to the formulation of “War and Society Studies” in the 1970s and 1980s.  Keegan’s The Face of Battle has become a classic and is still required reading at most programs in War and Society Studies.

The New York Times has published an obituary of Keegan online.