David F. Krugler was born and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He pursued his undergraduate studies at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where he majored in English and history. After graduating, he went on to earn a M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Krugler is currently a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin—Platteville. He is a historian of the modern United States and has written books on a variety of topics, including Cold War propaganda, nuclear warfare, and racial conflict in the United States. His published works include "The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, 1945-1953" (University of Missouri Press, 2000), "This Is Only a Test: How Washington, D.C., Prepared for Nuclear War" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and "1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back" (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
In addition to his non-fiction works, Krugler has also written a World War II spy thriller, "The Dead Don't Bleed" (Pegasus Crime, 2016), and its sequel, "Rip the Angels from Heaven" (July 3, 2018). He has been a faculty leader for teacher education programs at the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Master of American History and Government program at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. Krugler has received research grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Organization of American Historians, and the White House Historical Association. He has also appeared in the National Geographic Channel documentary American Doomsday and has been interviewed by various media outlets. In his free time, Krugler enjoys overseas travel, going to art museums, and reading mysteries.