Author, scholar, and former college president Josiah Bunting III delivered the third annual "Heroes of History Lecture" on Oct. 18 at the Old Post Office Pavilion in Washington.

Bunting, whose recent book, Ulysses S. Grant (2004), was written as part of Arthur M. Schlesinger's "The American Presidents Series," spoke on "George Marshall: An American for All Seasons."

"The 'Heroes of History' lecture explores the lives of courageous Americans by providing new insights into their lives, their decisions, and the consequences of their actions," said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. "Josiah Bunting brings an exemplary career of teaching, writing, and leadership to his research on George C. Marshall, the distinguished World War II U.S. military leader and diplomat who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953."

Bunting became president of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation in 2004 after serving for eight years as superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Va. He serves concurrently as chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He is a 1963 graduate of VMI and later studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and at Columbia University, where he was a John Burgess Fellow. From 1966 until 1972 he served on active duty in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of major. He served in Vietnam and as an assistant professor of history at West Point. Later he served successively as professor of history at the Naval War College and as president of Briarcliff College (1973-1977) and Hampden Sydney College (1977-1987).

His publications include four novels and a new biography to be published by Knopf in 2006 on the life of George C. Marshall. Mr. Bunting's first novel, The Lionheads, was selected as one of the "Ten Best Novels of 1973" by Time magazine; his utopian fantasy about an ideal college, An Education for Our Time, was a main selection of the Conservative Book Club in 1998.