A Companion to American Military History

The intentions of this ambitious work are not fully indicated in its title, for while that refers to “history”, a note on the cover calls it “a comprehensive analysis of the historiography of United States military events and experiences”. The resulting volumes appear to be a somewhat uneasy compromise between the two, for the Editor declares in his Introduction that his aim is to provide both basic information about the subject, and to assess its historiography. Not all the 60 contributors have interpreted this aim in the same way: the first two essays make that point. The first, on the...