Dorris Clayton James was born on February 13, 1931, in Winchester, Kentucky, to Dorris Clayton (b.1890) and Opal Vashti Shetter James (1896-1932). In early childhood he moved to Natchez, Mississippi, and lived with his relatives, Newell and Daisy Bankston. In 1953 he married Erlene Downs and they had four children: Dorris Sherrod (1955- ), Newell Edmund (1956- ), Judith Erlene (1960- ), and Allie Brady (1964- ).
After graduating from Natchez High School in 1949, James attended Southwestern at Memphis and graduated in 1953. He went on to receive a B.D. degree from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 1956 and served in churches in Union, Kentucky, and Cameron, Texas, between 1954 and 1960 as well as being a Naval Reserve chaplain. Beginning graduate work at the University of Cincinnati from 1956 to 1957, James moved to the University of Texas at Austin to complete an M.A. in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1964. He began teaching history at Louisiana State University at Alexandria in 1961 before accepting an assistant professorship at Mankato State College, Minnesota, in 1964. Returning to Mississippi in 1965, James began a 23-year association with Mississippi State University as a professor of history, becoming a Distinguished Professor in 1978. He also held the Harold K. Johnson Chair of Military History at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania and the John F. Morrison Chair of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas. In addition, James was a Harmon Lecturer at the U.S. Air Force Academy in those years. In 1988 he moved to Lexington, Virginia, to become the John Biggs Chair in Military History at the Virginia Military Institute until his retirement in 1996.
Books in order of publication:
Antebellum Natchez (1968)
South to Bataan, North to Mukden (1971)
The Years of MacArthur, Volume I: 1880-1941 (1974)
The Years of MacArthur, Volume II: 1941-1945 (1974)
Command Crisis: MacArthur and the Korean War (1982)
The Years of MacArthur, Volume III (1986)
A Time for Giants: The Politics of the American High Command in World War II (1987) with Anne Sharpe Wells
Refighting the Last War: Command and Crisis in Korea 1950-1953 (1992) with Anne Sharpe Wells
From Pearl Harbor to V-J Day: The American Armed Forces in World War II (1995) with Anne Sharpe Wells
America and the Great War: 1914-1920 (1998) with Anne Sharpe Wells
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