This volume presents nine articles that examine American citizens’ struggle for equal treatment and rights in military ranks. Beth Bailey explains in the introduction that “Americans have traditionally used military service to justify claims to the full rights of citizenship” (2), and indeed the contributors provide an astute examination of how arguments about equality in the military context were tightly bound to similar discussions and challenges in the broader civilian sphere.

Four of the chapters focus on struggles against racial discrimination. Douglas Walter Bristol Jr. provides a textured inspection of the discrimination that African American soldiers faced during World War II, convincingly arguing that their mass resistance to such oppression, coupled with a manpower crisis, forced the Roosevelt administration to “experiment with integration” and allow black soldiers to fight (12). James T. Westheider's chapter on race relations in the Vietnam War military provides welcome attention on the ways rank affected attitudes towards racial strife in uniform. Westheider shows that “black officers tended to be more conservative and pro-military than black enlisted personnel” (107), and many of them defended the system against accusations of racism or bigotry. James M. McCaffrey provides a fascinating history of Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers in World War II. McCaffrey's attention to detail (the fact that Nisei soldiers were supplied with women's clothing, for example) draws the links between masculinity, race, and hazing practices. Isaac Hampton II's chapter on the establishment of the Defense Race Relations Institute in 1971 (which later became the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute) relies on oral-history interviews with leaders of the institute to reveal the ways it strove to change attitudes within the ranks regarding not only race, but gender too.

Gender stands at the center of four other chapters. Charissa Threat's chapter on the efforts of male nurses to gain access to employment in the Army Nurse Corps between the mid-1940s and early 1950s is provocative and illuminating. Threat shows that female nurses harvested conservative reactionary attitudes to protect the field of nursing as their own. Ironically, reactionary gender conservatism also brought the breakthrough: military authorities chose to allow male nurses to serve under the rationale that it would spare women from facing the desperate carnage of warfare. In a chapter on women in the Cold War military, Tanya L. Roth posits that the campaign launched by servicewomen for women's equality served as a precursor to the second-wave feminism movement of the 1960s. Paradoxically, Roth shows, the military anchored its recruitment of women in military needs, but then largely refused to use women to fulfill required functions, focussing on grooming training instead. Heather Marie Stur's chapter focusses on gender perceptions in the military from the Vietnam War onward. Stur's insightful study relies on a variety of rich sources to examine the threat many within the military found in the prospect of women serving as officers and as combat soldiers. Kara Dixon Vuic provides a detailed account of changing military norms when it came to sanctioning the marriage and sexual behavior of female soldiers. Whereas sexual appetite among men was considered a healthy indicator of virility, women were often dishonorably discharged for behavior that was seen as promiscuous. Unlike most contributions to the volume, Vuic's piece does not provide a trajectory of progress: even today, with evidence of rampant sexual offences, the US military still does not perform or cover expenses for abortions for servicewomen unless there is a health threat to the soldier. In the final chapter, Steve Estes examines the struggle for equality for gay personnel in the military, which was modeled after the earlier (and relatively successful) struggle for integrated African American service. Estes's fascinating chapter shows that the argument to end official discrimination gained traction only when it managed to convince politicians that the price of discriminating against gay service personnel was not ethical alone, but that military efficiency was at stake. In the conclusion, editors Douglas Walter Bristol Jr. and Heather Marie Stur help draw interesting comparative links between the various chapters, revealing relevant similarities and patterns.

Packing so much into a relatively compact volume, it is perhaps unavoidable the volume does not provide equal attention to all of its declared purposes. The editors’ stated goal to help illuminate “America's role in the world” (5, 236), for example, does not receive consistent treatment here. Stur's chapter on gender during Vietnam is the exception, dedicating welcome attention to this important facet. Stur demonstrates that hateful speech and acts towards women not only defined intra-military and domestic gender relations, but also shaped the ways American soldiers performed violence on Vietnamese women (155–56). Such examples remind us that unlike employees who might organize for equal rights in other organizations, American soldiers were in the unique position of having been entrusted with the mission, burden, and opportunity of exacting violence on others around the world. Did this provide release from domestic frustrations? Did invasions and occupations provide opportunities for soldiers from discriminated groups to form alliances with non-American counterparts? On the whole the volume is rather quiet on this front.Footnote ¹ But this comment does not diminish what is an already highly accomplished volume. In its variety, breadth, and provocative argumentation, this book amounts to a meaningful contribution to a range of fields, including civil–military relations, civil rights struggles, and gender relations. Scholars of these topics should turn to this volume for rich and highly informative studies of these important subjects.