A reader who picks up this volume expecting a compendious battle history of the US military is in for a bit of a surprise – albeit, one would hope, a pleasant surprise, as it was for this reviewer. Jeffrey Charleston's intent in putting together this volume is, rather, to take a look at the “maturation” of the study of US military history since the mid-1980s. This maturation encompasses moving beyond the more traditional approach of military history – the study of military operations or battles – to encompass the study of the historical role and development of the US military. The broadening of the study of the US military in this way necessarily moves beyond battle or operational histories to address other relevant themes, and the volume is structured to reflect this broadened historical inquiry: military operations; policy, doctrine, and decision-making; science, technology, and industry; and cultural and social aspects.

In each of these sections Charleston has chosen a number of previously published pieces that demonstrate the range, depth and quality of US military history scholarship. The volume comprises twenty chapters in all, which means that the pieces in each section serve as representatives of the particular themes of the historiography of the US military. Moreover, the subjects of the various pieces in each section span the length of history of the US military, as well as of the breadth of potential issues. The result is that there appears to be no obvious historical continuity across the pieces in each of the four main sections, coming across, as it were, as being a somewhat “potted” history of different aspects of the development of the US military. But Charleston has chosen wisely, as each piece reveals an interesting facet or theme of the development of the US military. The stand-alone character of each piece allows the reader to pick and choose their way through the volume as whim or interest may dictate, as this reader did, but together the pieces that Charleston has chosen for this volume will enrich the reader's understanding of the US military, of where it has come from and why it is as it is today.

Charleston notes in his introduction that American academia today tends to view military history as a suspect, almost disreputable, scholarly inquiry, a concern that has been publicly echoed in some quarters during the first half of 2007. While this book is not likely to alter suddenly American academia's view of military history, it does demonstrate just how misguided is any such perspective.