In 1942, Morison met with his friend President Franklin D. Roosevelt and offered to write a history of United States Navy operations during the war from an insider's perspective by taking part in operations and documenting them.
In History as a Literary Art: An Appeal to Young Historians (1946), Morison argued that vivid writing springs from the synergy of experience and research: American historians, in their eagerness to present facts and their laudable concern to tell the truth, have neglected the literary aspects of their craft.