The author's interest in Air Force doctrine was first aroused when he was a sergeant serving as an aerial gunnery instructor in early 1943. When the operational research people revealed that what we were teaching was faulty, he came to realize that the Air Force system for developing doctrine was flawed. The problem continued to interest him and later, after he was commissioned and serving on the faculty of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, he wrote his book Ideas and Weapons using the experience of the air arm to expound the need for a more systematic procedure for developing doctrine. Because the doctrinal materials gathered on World War II were still highly classified, he reverted to World War I to put across his thesis without violating security. The author's real concern was to contribute to the soon to be established US Air Force in the search for a more effective means of formulating doctrine. The essays that follow reflect how his ideas developed over the 30-odd years of my Air Force career. Inevitably there are some overlaps and repetitions given the origin of these essays as articles and lectures spread over many years. The main themes are evident. He repeatedly made the case for the importance of doctrine and the need to perfect the technological advances in equipment. He was concerned to see that doctrine was continually perfected in peacetime and not just in wartime when the pressure of enemy performance provides a powerful incentive to do this. Another theme repeatedly stated was the need for officers suitably educated to see the importance of doctrine and realize that doctrine is literally “everybody's business” and not just the concern of a handful of individuals assigned to the formal task of compiling doctrinal manuals. These people are important, but they cannot perform effectively if officers throughout the service fail to write after-action reports summarizing their valuable experiences, not just in air operations but in all aspects of the air arm activities, procurement, personnel administration, logistics, and legislative liaison. One can easily make the case that improving the ability of the Air Force to cope with Congress is just as important as suggesting the best possible doctrine for aerial combat. One can't just assume that every newly promoted flag officer will instinctively understand the best way of testifying on Capitol Hill. Much of the doctrinal problem within the Air Force stems from the professional education of officers. Unless they are rigorously educated to undertake the objective analysis of recorded historical experience, all the most carefully edited doctrinal manuals will avail little. One of the author's insistent themes is the need to make doctrinal manuals not only more readable but more memorable. To this end several of the following essays are addressed to those who are assigned as doctrinal writers.

The idea of The Fingerprint Sourcebook originated during a meeting in April 2002. Individuals representing the fingerprint, academic, and scientific communities met in Chicago, Illinois, for a day and a half to discuss the state of fingerprint identification with a view toward the challenges raised by Daubert issues. The meeting was a joint project between the International Association for Identification (IAI) and West Virginia University (WVU). One recommendation that came out of that meeting was a suggestion to create a sourcebook for friction ridge examiners, that is, a single source of researched information regarding the subject. This sourcebook would provide educational, training, and research information for the international scientific community.

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.