The son of Charles August Bauer, an engineer, and Isabelle Fairbanks, Jack Bauer attended Harvard College, where he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948. He went on to graduate study at Indiana University, where he earned his Master of Arts in 1949 with a thesis on "United States naval shipbuilding programs, 1775-1860" and his Ph.D. degree in 1953 with a dissertation on "United States naval operations during the Mexican War."
On 18 August 1951, he married Dorothy Sargent, with whom he had three children, Eric, Neil, and Anne.
List of World War I Signal Corps Films (Record Group 111) (National Archives, 1957)
The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. (Naval History Division, 1959);
Surfboats and Horse Marines: U.S. Naval Operations in the Mexican War, 1846-48 (Naval Institute Press, 1969)
Ships of the Navy – Combat Vessels (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1970); revised and extended by Stephen S. Roberts as Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1775–1990: Major Combatants (Greenwood Press, 1995).
The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (Macmillan, 1974).
Soldiering : the Civil War diary of Rice C. Bull, 123rd New York Volunteer Infantry, edited by K. Jack Bauer. San Rafael, California : Presidio Press, 1977.
American Secretaries of the Navy, (Naval Institute Press, 1980).
The New American State Papers: Naval Affairs (Scholarly Resources, 1981.
Ports in the West edited with Benjamin F. Gilbert, (Sunflower University Press, 1983).
History of navigation & navigation improvements on the Pacific coast by Anthony F. Turhollow, Benjamin F. Gilbert, K. Jack Bauer. [Fort Belvoir, Va.?] : National Waterways Study, U.S. Army Engineer Water Resources Support Center, Institute for Water Resources ; Washington, D.C. : For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. G.P.O., [1983].
U.S. Naval and Marine Corps Bases with Paolo Coletta, (Greenwood Press, 1985).
Soldier, Planter, Statesman: Zachary Taylor and the Old Southwest (Louisiana State University Press, 1986).
A maritime history of the United States : the role of America's seas and waterways Columbia, South Carolina : University of South Carolina Press, 1988.
