Early life and education[edit]

Cowley is the son of prominent writer and literary critic Malcolm Cowley and Muriel Mauer. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, graduating in 1952. Thereafter, he earned an A.B. degree in history in 1956 from Harvard College in Massachusetts.[1]

Personal life[edit]

He was married to Blair Cowley; they later divorced and she remarried to artist Paul Resika. They had two daughters, Elizabeth and Miranda. Miranda Cowley, is married to film producer and director Bruno Heller, son of screenwriter Lukas Heller and grandson of political philosopher Hermann Heller. Cowley was married to Susan Cheever, daughter of novelist John Cheever from 1967 to 1975.[2] He married Edith Lorillard, daughter of Elaine Lorillard, who founded the Newport 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.  3860691

OCLC

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,  0-86706-068-9.

ISBN

Experience of War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 1993,  0-440-50553-4

ISBN

The Reader's Companion to Military History, by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1996,  978-0-618-12742-9

ISBN

No End Save Victory: Perspectives on World War II, edited by Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001,  978-0-425-18338-0 OCLC 44932120

ISBN

With My Face to the Enemy: Perspectives on the Civil War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001,  978-0-7126-7946-6 OCLC 45375993

ISBN

West Point: Two Centuries of Honor and Tradition, edited by Robert Cowley and Thomas Guinzburg, New York: Warner Books, 2002.  0-446-53018-2 OCLC 49748770

ISBN

The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 2003,  978-1-84413-419-9

ISBN

The Cold War, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Random House, 2006,  978-0-8129-6716-6

ISBN

The World’s Most Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 1999, ISBN 0-425-17642-8 OCLC 41338197

What If?

Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 2001, ISBN 0-399-14795-0

More What If?

, ed. Robert Cowley, New York, Putnam, 1999, ISBN 0-399-15091-9

What Ifs? of American History

Random House Author Spotlight

William H. Honan, The New York Times, December 19, 1988.

The Lessons of War Sell in Peacetime

Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, December 18, 1996.

Generals, Battlefields, and What Raleigh Said

Andrew Krepinevich, Foreign Affairs, May/June 1997.

Review: The Reader's Companion to Military History

William H. Honan, The New York Times, January 7, 1998.

Historians Warming To Games Of 'What If'

David Clay Large, The New York Times, May 10, 1998.

Word for Word: Historical 'What Ifs?'; Annie Could've Gotten Her Gun And Blown Away the Kaiser

David Murray, The New York Times, October 17, 1999.

Books in Brief: Nonfiction

Martin Arnold, The New York Times, December 21, 2000.

Making Books; The 'What Ifs' That Fascinate

Chuck Leddy, San Francisco Chronicle, September 9, 2003.

It All Could Have Been Different

Laura Miller, New York Times Book Review, September 5, 2004.

Imagine