John Spencer

John Spencer is one of the world's leading experts on urban warfare. He is the co-founder and executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute, Chair of War Studies at the Madison Policy Forum, and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. He is the co-author of Understanding Urban Warfare and the author of Connected Soldiers, winner of the 2023 Gold Medal for Best Military History Memoir from the Military Writers Society of America. His latest book—Twenty Times I Almost Died: Life Lessons from the Edge of Survival—turns twenty brushes with death into lessons on character, decision-making, and what stress strips away. In February 2022 he wrote The Mini-Manual for the Urban Defender, a guide for Ukrainian civilians on how to defend their cities, now published in sixteen languages. Spencer served more than twenty-five years in the US Army, rising from private to major, with two combat tours in Iraq that included the 2003 invasion and the 2008 Battle of Sadr City, and he has since done field research in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Nagorno-Karabakh, and India. He is a regular military analyst for Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC, and he holds a master's degree in policy management from Georgetown University. He met his wife during a deployment to Iraq; they have three children and live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.