Modern American Military History

Without question, the American military has opened doors for those left outside the mainstream of public education. A long tradition of servant-leadership has produced a system demonstrating excellence in education and in many ways continuing the servant leader tradition of leadership by trial.

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 modern US Army as we know it was largely created in the years between the two world wars. Prior to World War I, officers in leadership positions were increasingly convinced that building a new army could not take place as a series of random developments but was an enterprise that had to be guided by a distinct military policy that enjoyed the support of the nation. In 1920, Congress accepted that idea and embodied it in the National Defense Act. In doing so it also accepted army leadership’s idea of entrusting America’s security to a unique force, the Citizen Army, and tasked the nation’s Regular Army with developing and training that force. Creating the Modern Army details the efforts of the Regular Army to do so in the face of austerity budgets and public apathy while simultaneously responding to the challenges posed by the new and revolutionary mechanization of warfare. In this book Woolley focuses on the development of what he sees as the four major features of the modernized army that emerged due to these efforts. These included the creation of the civilian components of the new army: the Citizen’s Military Training Camps, the Officer Reserve Corps, the National Guard, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps; the development of the four major combat branches as the structural basis for organizing the army as well as creating the means to educate new officers and soldiers about their craft and to socialize them into an army culture; the creation of a rationalized and progressive system of professional military education; and the initial mechanization of the combat branches. Woolley also points out how the development of the army in this period was heavily influenced by policies and actions of the president and Congress. The US Army that fought World War II was clearly a citizen army whose leadership was largely trained within the framework of the institutions of the army created by the National Defense Act. The way that army fought the war may have been less decisive and more costly in terms of lives and money than it should have been. But that army won the war and therefore validated the citizen army as the US way of war.

From the Publisher: This latest edition of an official U.S. Government military history classic provides an authoritative historical survey of the organization and accomplishments of the United States Army. This scholarly yet readable book is designed to inculcate an awareness of our nation's military past and to demonstrate that the study of military history is an essential ingredient in leadership development. It is also an essential addition to any personal military history library.

From the Battle of Bunker Hill to the Battle of Midway

Completely unique in its global scope, this major text does what no other book in the field does: provides students with an excellent account of modern military history with analysis of strategy, as well as tactical and operational developments in the field of war. Carefully written by a highly renowned author, this book has been widely praised by American and UK reviewers for its astonishing grasp of detail and its encyclopedic knowledge. Arranged chronologically, it spans the American War of Independence, through the French Revolution, right up to the latest conflicts in the 2000s. Specially designed to be user-friendly, Introduction to Global Military History offers: chapter introductions and conclusions to assist study and revision ‘voices of war’ – sourced extracts from the field of war case studies in each chapter to support the narrative and provoke discussion vivid engravings, plans, paintings, and photos to bring the conflicts alive a twelve page colour map section plus twenty-one other integrated maps annotated references from the latest publications in the field. Jeremy Black covers all aspects of military conflict, masterfully combining the study of tactics and war strategy with the social, cultural and political consequences of war.

Key military developments occurred in the Early Modern period, during which armies evolved from troops of medieval knights to Napoleon's mass levies. Firearms impelled change, necessitating new battlefield tactics and fundamentally altering siege and naval warfare. The size and cost of military forces expanded enormously, and new standing armies underpinned the growing absolutist power of princes. Academic experts from both sides of the Atlantic review these developments, discussing the medieval legacy, Spain, the Ottoman Turks, the Thirty Years War, Prussia, the ancien régime and the Napoleonic Wars, together with sea power, the American Revolution and warfare outside the West.