army branches - infantry, artillery, cavalry, and engineers - as well as the service and support branches comprising doctors and nurses, chaplains, musicians, quartermasters, military police, and the many others who have made up the U.S. Army. Insignia worn by all soldiers, such as eagles, devices with the letters US, and other letters and numbers, are also described and illustrated. Historians, military collectors, military reenactors, antique dealers and collectors,

A study of the establishment of inspection practices in the United States Army told chronologically, in large part through the experiences of officers assigned to the inspection service. The record of the inspectorate illustrates those daily concerns that influenced the institutional development of the Inspector General Corps as a whole.

Drawing on numerous diaries, journals, and reminiscences, Richard Bruce Winders presents the daily life of soldiers at war; links the army to the society that produced it; shares his impressions of the soldiers he "met" along the way; and concludes that American participants in the Mexican War shared a common experience, no matter their rank or place of service. Taking a "new" military history approach, Mr. Polk's Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War examines the cultural, social, and political aspects of the regular and volunteer forces that made up the army of 1846-48, presents the organizational framework of the army, and introduces the different styles of leadership exhibited by Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott.