The American Military: A Concise History narrates the American military experience. It focuses on four recurring themes-citizen soldiers vs. the standing armed forces; military professionalism; mechanization and technology; and the limits of power-and illuminates the role of the American military in its past and how it is shaping current and future national security issues.

American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.

The U.S. military can be thought of as a microcosm of American society, bringing in people from diverse backgrounds and history to defend one nation. Military leaders must address the same issues and concerns as those found in the civilian world, including exclusion, segregation, and discrimination. In some cases, the military has led the nation by creating policies of inclusion before civilian laws required them to do so. In other causes, the military has lagged behind the larger society. The goal of this book is to provide an overview of the ways in which diversity has been addressed in the military by providing information about particular forms of diversity including race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality. Subject matter experts provide their insights into the roles that each of these groups have played in the U.S. armed services as well as the laws, rules, and regulations regarding their participation. Ultimately, the authors utilize this information as a way to better understand military diversity and the unique ways that individuals incorporate the military into their sense identity.

In A People's History of the U.S. Military, historian Michael A. Bellesiles draws from three centuries of soldiers' personal encounters with combat—through fascinating excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, as well as audio recordings, film, and blogs—to capture the essence of the American military experience firsthand, from the American Revolution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military service can shatter and give meaning to lives; it is rarely a neutral encounter, and has contributed to a rich outpouring of personal testimony from the men and women who have literally placed their lives on the line. The often dramatic and always richly textured first-person accounts collected in this book cover a wide range of perspectives, from ardent patriots to disillusioned cynics; barely literate farm boys to urbane college graduates; scions of founding families to recent immigrants, enthusiasts, and dissenters; women disguising themselves as men in order to serve their country to African Americans fighting for their freedom through military service. A work of great relevance and immediacy—as the nation grapples with the return of thousands of men and women from active military duty—A People's History of the U.S. Military will become a major new touchstone for our understanding of American military service.

The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war. Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan's radical presidency, the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the scope of American military power to overpower our political discourse. Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seri­ously funny, Drift reinvigorates a "loud and jangly" political debate about our vast and confounding national security state.

The American Military: A Narrative History presents a comprehensive introduction to more than four centuries of American military history. Presents a chronological account of American military history from clashes between militias and Native Americans to 21st-century operations in Afghanistan and Iraq Features personal vignettes to put a human face on armed conflict Addresses patterns of national service, the evolution of civil-military relations, and the advent of all-volunteer forces Puts events in historical context, and considers cultural, social, political, economic, and technological developments