Best known for leading the construction of the Panama Canal, George W. Goethals (1858–1928) also played a key role in the decades-long reform that transformed the American military from a frontier constabulary to the expeditionary force of an ascendant world power. George W. Goethals and the Army is at once the first full account of Goethals’s life and military career in ninety years and an in-depth analysis of the process that defined his generation’s military service—the evoluti...

The first in-depth study of racial integration at West Point after the Civil WarRace, Politics, and Reconstruction tells the story of racial integration at the United States Military Academy after the Civil War and spotlights the social environment and cultural currents that led to its failure. The first attempt to racially integrate West Point proved not simply a lost opportunity but an opportunity sabotaged with shocking degrees of forethought and delibe...