Mitchell antagonized many people in the army with his arguments and criticism and in 1925 was demoted to colonel, and later that year, he was court-martialed for insubordination after accusing army and navy leaders of an "almost treasonable administration of the national defense." He resigned from the service shortly afterward. Following his death, however, Mitchell received many honors, including a commission as major general. He is the only individual after whom a type of American military aircraft is named: the B-25 "Mitchell" bomber.

This book, first published in 1990, is a provocative collection of military quotations that captures the human essence of warfare. From the skirmishes beneath the walls of Troy to the dropping of the atomic bomb, nearly 3,500 quotations distil the experiences of generations of soldiers, depicting the preparation for and the waging of war. Read the words of field marshals and generals, kings and dictators, and follow them into battle – Alexander the Great at Issus, Wellington at Waterloo, Sitting Bull at Little Big Horn and Montgomery at El Alamein. Here too are the recorded details of life among the ranks as diverse as ammunition and uniform, sick parade and comradeship, discipline and ‘Dear John’ letters. A final section, ‘Last Post’, deals with the tragic aftermath of conflict.

Flying Blind offers an astute analysis of the role of organizational forces in initiating and shaping weapons programs. Michael E. Brown concerns himself with how weapons programs begin and why they turn out as they do. In the process he redresses a large imbalance in our understanding of how nations arm themselves. In an unmatched account constructed from massive archival work and material declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, the author provides a detailed description of all fifteen postwar U.S. strategic bomber programs, from the B-35 to the B-2. Challenging the conventional wisdom about arms races and the weapons acquisition process, Brown marshals compelling evidence that Air Force reactions to strategic developments, not technological opportunism or industry initiative, brought about many major innovations in those programs. He also discusses competing explanations of the cost, schedule, and performance problems that plague U.S. acquisition efforts. He maintains that powerful strategic and bureaucratic forces lead American military organizations to set their performance requirements far beyond the state of the art and to push their programs as fast as possible. This, he argues, is a recipe for disaster. Developing a comprehensive explanation of the cost and performance problems that plague modern weapons programs, he presents policy recommendations designed to address these issues.

With more than 60 essays, A Companion to American MilitaryHistory presents a comprehensive analysis of the historiographyof United States military history from the colonial era to thepresent. Covers the entire spectrum of US history from the Indian andimperial conflicts of the seventeenth century to the battles inAfghanistan and Iraq Features an unprecedented breadth of coverage from eminentmilitary historians and emerging scholars, including little studiedtopics such as the military and music, military ethics, care of thedead, and sports Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every importantera and topic Summarizes current debates and identifies areas whereconflicting interpretations are in need of further study