Distinguished Speaker Series – Insights from the Cold War for the 21st Century
You are invited to a Distinguished Speaker Series dinner event on Oct. 14, 2026, at JW Crancer’s in downtown Leavenworth, Kansas (530 Delaware St.). A reception with cash bar begins at 5:30 p.m., the buffet dinner starts at 6 p.m. and the presentation will begin at 7 p.m.
In this installment of our Distinguished Speaker Series, Col. (Ret.) Gregory Fontenot will discuss Lariat Advance: Insights from the Cold War for the Twenty-First Century, an anthology he co-created with Pat O’Neal, Mike Shaler, and the late Lon “Bert” Maggart. Named for the Army’s no-notice alert system that required units in Europe to reach combat readiness within two hours, Lariat Advance chronicles how relentless practice and evolving doctrine forged what the book calls an “Army of Practice” — the force that won the Gulf War and validated its transformation again in 2003. Written by fifteen distinguished contributors who lived this era, the anthology offers lessons on readiness and institutional reform that remain relevant as today’s Army reshapes for future strategic competition.
Tickets are $35/person in advance or $40/person at the door.
Please register using the form below.
Colonel (Ret.) Gregory Fontenot served in the U.S. Army as an armor officer for more than 28 years at duty locations in the United States, Europe, the Balkans and Southwest Asia. His key assignments included commanding a battalion during Operations Desert Shield and Storm and a brigade in Bosnia. As an educator he taught history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was director of the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In his last assignment he commanded the Battle Command Training Program at Fort Leavenworth.
After his military retirement in 1999, Fontenot embarked on a second career as a Department of the Army Civilian in the military intelligence specialty. In this capacity he served as director of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s wargaming directorate and later as director of the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies, the Army’s “red teaming” school. He served on campaign plan assessment teams in Iraq in 2010 and Afghanistan in 2011. He left the civil service in 2013 to pursue his interest in writing military history.
Fontenot has authored numerous articles and book reviews in Army magazine, Military Review and other publications, and is co-author of On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. In 2017 he published The 1st Infantry and the US Army Transformed: The Road to Victory in Desert Storm 1970-1991, which earned him the 2017 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History. In 2019 he published Loss and Redemption at St Vith: The 7th Armored Division in the Battle of the Bulge and his most recent work, No Sacrifice too Great: The 1st Infantry Division in World War II was published in June 2023.
Among many other awards and recognition, Fontenot was inducted into the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame in May 2025.
The CGSC Foundation and Alumni Association conducts the Distinguished Speaker Series (DSS) program to offer extracurricular, educational lectures intended to help enrich the Command and General Staff School curriculum and provide opportunities for outreach to the public. Topics covered in the Distinguished Speaker Series of lectures span the gamut of leadership and ethics, organizational effectiveness, collaboration, as well as current events and issues in business, government and the military.
