Historian and strategic communications consultant James Aalan Bernsen is a native of Castroville TX, a historical town near San Antonio founded by Alsatian settlers in the mid-1800s. Bernsen lives on the same family farm he grew up on, which he purchased in 2022 to save from development.
James majored in German and Journalism at Texas A&M, studied at the Eberhard-Karls University in Tübingen, Germany and has a master’s degree in history from Texas State University.
His book The Lost War for Texas: Mexican Rebels, American Burrites, and the Texas Revolution of 1811 is a Texas-history best seller on Amazon. The book, published in 2024, reclaims a forgotten chapter in Texas history, a war that took place from 1811-13 that set the stage for the Texas Revolution of 1836. The book reshapes our knowledge of the process that ultimately transformed the Southwest from a Spanish and Mexican possession to an independent republic and American state. The book was awarded the Carr P. Collins Award for best non-fiction book of 2024 by the Texas Institute of Letters.
James has been a Texas Gulf Coast newspaper reporter, served on staff to a U.S. Senator, and has appeared as a spokesperson for institutional and corporate clients in over 250 television interviews on local, state and national news outlets.
After 9/11, Bernsen joined the United States Navy as an intelligence officer. He has been deployed on active duty to Iraq (2007-08), Afghanistan (2017-18) and has served in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Australia. Among his military deployments is time served on board the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) in the Western Pacific.
James has been awarded the Defense Meritorious Service Award, the Korea Defense Medal and the Joint Service Commendation Medal. He a graduate with distinction of the US Naval War College.
