Throughout history, battlefields have placed a soldier’s instinct for self-preservation in direct opposition to the army’s insistence that he do his duty and put himself in harm’s way. Enduring Battle looks beyond advances in weaponry to examine changes in warfare at the very personal level. Drawing on the combat experiences of American soldiers in three widely separated wars—the Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II—Christopher Hamner explores why soldiers fight in the face...

The country’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its interventions around the world, and its global military presence make war, the military, and militarism defining features of contemporary American life. The armed services and the wars they fight shape all aspects of life—from the formation of racial and gendered identities to debates over environmental and immigration policy. Warfare and the military are ubiquitous in popular culture.At War offers short, accessible essays ad...

The Art of Maneuver shows how true maneuver-warfare theory has been applied in campaigns throughout history. With a genius for apt analogy the author shows how our obsession with fighting and winning set-piece battles causes us to overlook an enemy’s true vulnerabilities. But as low-intensity conflicts promise to become the dominant warfare of the future, the importance of maneuver in attacking an enemy’s critical vulnerability will render attrition approaches to warfighting ever ...

A "well-chosen anthology of the radical historian's prodigious output," from A People's History of the United States and lesser known sources ( Kirkus Reviews).When Howard Zinn died in early 2010, millions of Americans mourned the loss of one of the nation's foremost intellectual and political guides; a historian, activist, and truth-teller who, in the words of the New York Times's Bob Herbert, "peel[ed] back the rosy veneer of much of A...

In his book Men Against Fire, [historian S. L. A.] Marshall asserted that only 15 to 25 percent of American soldiers ever fired their weapons in combat in World War II. . . .Shooting at the enemy made a man part of the “team,” or “brotherhood.” There were, of course, many times when soldiers did not want to shoot, suchas at night when they did not want to give away a position or on reconnaissance patrols. But, in the main, no combat soldier in his right mind would ha...

This New York Times bestseller is a blistering critique of the gulf between America's soldiers and the society that sends them off to war.In Breach of Trust, Andrew J. Bacevich takes stock of the separation between Americans and their military, tracing its origins to the Vietnam era and exploring its pernicious implications: a nation with an abiding appetite for war waged at enormous expense by a standing army d...

What essential leadership lessons do we learn by distilling the actions and ideas of great military commanders such as George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Colin Powell? That is the fundamental question underlying The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell. The book illustrates that great leaders become great through conscious effort—a commitment not only to develop vital skills but also to surmount personal shortcomings. Harry S. Laver, Jeffrey ...

A bold and urgent perspective on how American foreign policy must change in response to the shifting world order of the twenty-first century, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Limits of Power and The Age of Illusions.The purpose of U.S. foreign policy has, at least theoretically, been to keep Americans safe. Yet as we confront a radically changed world, it has become indisputably clear that the terms of that policy have fa...

“What does it take to make a great general or a great leader in any field? . . . An excellent contribution to the study of leadership among those who make life-and-death decisions in the most challenging situations—one that could well serve as required reading in both military and business schools.”—Kirkus ReviewsThroughout his life, Edgar F. “Beau” Puryear has studied America’s top military leaders. In his research for this book, he has sought to discover...

John M. Collins has distilled the wisdom of historys great military minds to tutor readers on the necessary intellectual skills to win not only battles but also wars. He illuminates practices that worked well or poorly in the past, together with reasons why. He discusses national security interests, strategic building blocks, military strategies across the conflict spectrum, methods for developing talent and strategic acumen, and recent case studies that put principles into practice. Collins ...

The Boys’ Crusade is the great historian Paul Fussell’s unflinching and unforgettable account of the American infantryman’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Based in part on the author’s own experiences, it provides a stirring narrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of view of the children—for children they were—who fought it. While dealing definitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, and tactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to te...

On the evening of September 11, 2002, with the Statue of Liberty shimmering in the background, television cameras captured President George W. Bush as he advocated war against Iraq. This carefully stage-managed performance, writes Susan A. Brewer, was the culmination of a long tradition of sophisticated wartime propaganda in America. In Why America Fights, Brewer offers a fascinating history of how successive presidents have conducted what Donald Rumsfeld calls "perception management," fro...