author

Edgar M. Howell

Known for bringing American military history to life at the Smithsonian, this historian and curator wrote clearly about uniforms, insignia, and the visual culture of the U.S. Army. His books are especially valued by readers interested in the nineteenth-century American West and early military traditions.

1 Audiobook

Hermann Stieffel, Soldier Artist of the West

Hermann Stieffel, Soldier Artist of the West

by Edgar M. Howell

About the author

Edgar M. Howell was a Smithsonian historian and museum curator whose work focused on American military history. Contemporary Smithsonian material identifies him as acting curator in the division of military history in the 1950s, and his published work shows a strong interest in uniforms, insignia, and the everyday material details that shaped the U.S. Army.

He is best known as the coauthor of American Military Insignia, 1800–1851, a Smithsonian study later distributed through Project Gutenberg, and as the author of Hermann Stieffel, Soldier Artist of the West. Those books suggest the kind of writer he was: careful with objects and historical evidence, but also interested in the human stories behind them.

Reliable biographical details about his life outside his museum work were hard to confirm from the sources I found, so this overview stays close to his documented publications and Smithsonian role. Even so, his surviving work makes clear that he helped preserve and explain a vivid corner of American history for later readers.