The American Military

The beauty of this work is that it is concise; the beast is that it is concise. Analysts, pundits, and scholars have built careers dissecting the American military and the national security establishment. Depending upon political climate, they have provided either critical or laudatory discussion trying to inform and educate while often issuing prescriptions for democracy's instruments of force and persuasion. Here, Joseph T. Glatthaar, an experienced and accomplished military historian, attempts to succinctly explore the military in the fabric of America from the colonial era to the information age. He contends from the beginning of his enlarged essay that “very few factors are as important and as expansive in shaping the course of U.S. history as its military experience” (p. ix). If true, then it is far too large a task, but he succeeds in whetting our appetite and whittling the story to at least appetizer dimensions. He offers four themes in as many chapters. They are as venerable as the Republic itself suggests. First is the attempt to strike a balance between regular, professional military forces and the nonprofessional citizen servicepersons as well as allocation of military strength and resources among the various armed forces. This quandary occupied the period between Jamestown's founding and the War of 1812. A second theme to emerge until the early twentieth century was attempts at military professionalism. A third overarching issue involved the leitmotiv of an industrial-age military grappling with technology, mechanization, and the world wars. Finally, in Glatthaar's fourth theme, the American military (and America itself) have been confronted by limits of power, on which we have yet to reach accommodation. A myriad of topics, such as race, gender, antimilitarism, that the author merely touches upon in this interpretation suggests that this work may be merely a tantalizing introduction to a fuller and more comprehensive study upon which, one might hope, Glatthaar has already embarked

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