LITMIR.BIZ

Ungentle Goodnights uses the records of the United States Naval Asylum (later the United States Naval Home), a residence for disabled and elderly sailors and Marines established by the U.S. government, to describe the lives of the 541 men who were admitted there as lifetime residents between 1831 and 1866. The records of the Naval Asylum are an especially rich source for discovering these lower-deck lives because would-be residents were required to submit summaries of their naval careers as part of the admission process. Using these and related records, published and manuscript, it is possible to reconstruct the veterans’ lives from their teenage years (and sometimes earlier) until their deaths. Previous historians who have written about the pre-Civil War naval enlisted force have depended on published nineteenth-century sailor and Marine autobiographies, which may not accurately reflect the realities of enlisted life. Ungentle Goodnights seeks to discover the life experiences of real Marines and naval sailors, not a few of whom were misbehaving, crafty, and engaging individuals who feature prominently in the book.

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This edited collection examines the changing character of military professionalism and the role of ethics in the 21st-century military. The authors, who range from uniformed military to academics to non-uniformed professionals on the battlefield, delve into whether the concepts of Samuel Huntington, Morris Janowitz, and Sir John Hackett still apply, how training and continuing education play a role in defining a profession, and if a universal code of ethics is required for the military as a profession. Redefining the Modern Military puts a significant emphasis on individual agency for military professionalism as opposed to broad organizational or cultural change.

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The American military-industrial complex and accompanying culture are most often associated with massive weapons procurement programs and advanced technologies. However, one aspect of the complex is not a weapon or even a machine, but one of the world’s most highly engineered consumer products: the manufactured cigarette. Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em describes the origins of the often comfortable, yet increasingly controversial relationship among the military, the cigarette industry, and tobaccoland politicians during the twentieth century. Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em is also a study in modern American political economy. Bureaucrats, soldiers, lobbyists, government executives, legislators, litigators, or anti-smoking activists all struggled over far-reaching policy issues involving the cigarette. The soldier-cigarette relationship established by the Army in World War I and broken apart in the mid-1980s underpinned one of the most prolific social, cultural, economic, and healthcare-related developments in the twentieth century: the rise and proliferation of the American manufactured cigarette smoker and the powerful cigarette enterprise supporting them. Using the manufactured cigarette as a vehicle to explore political economy and interactions between the military and American society, Joel R. Bius helps the reader understand this important, yet overlooked aspect of twentieth-century America.

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This book uses the 21st Century Foundations series format to re-introduce to the military community the writings of General Thomas S. Power, the third Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). His unappreciated works contain many insights into military topics such as technology and the arms race, the nature of deterrence, and the military utility of space. Unifying all of these writings was Power’s quest to maintain nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. Although Power is considered a quintessential Cold Warrior, his ideas are timely considering today’s challenges of re-energizing the morale and technology of U.S. strategic forces in the wake of foreign advances, discerning what deterrence means in the “Second Nuclear Age,” and planning the future of space and cyber power.

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Red Crew is a first-hand account of U.S. Coast Guard anti-smuggling operations during the early years of the nation’s maritime war on drugs. Jim Howe describes his experience as the executive officer of a specialized drug-hunting crew that sailed in then-state-of-the-art “surface effect ships,” a small flotilla of high-speed vessels pressed into the drug war on short notice.
In the early 1980s, South Florida and the Caribbean were awash in illicit drugs, with hundreds of smuggling organizations bringing huge loads of marijuana, and later cocaine, into the United States. To fight this epidemic, the Reagan administration led a massive effort to disrupt shore-side gangs while bolstering interdiction activity at sea. To increase the number of days at sea for each surface effect ship, a “multi-crewing” concept was employed, with four teams of sixteen sailors—the Red, Blue, Green, and Gold Crews—rotating among three hulls.
Through its first-person narrative, Red Crew offers a rare glimpse into the day-to-day pressures, challenges, failures, and successes of Coast Guard cuttermen as they carried out complex and dangerous missions. Red Crew provides a unique historical view of the early days in the Coast Guard’s war on drugs, and is the only book-length history of the diminutive, one-of-a-kind surface effect ship fleet.

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This study examines how intellectual and institutional developments transformed the U.S. Navy from 1873 to 1898. The period was a dynamic quarter-century in which Americans witnessed their Navy evolve. Cultures of progress—clusters of ideas, beliefs, values, and practices pertaining to modern warfare and technology—guided the Navy's transformation.
The agents of naval transformation embraced a progressive ideology. They viewed science, technology, and expertise as the best means to effect change in a world contorted by modernizing and globalizing trends. Within the Navy’s progressive movement, two new cultures—Strategy and Mechanism—influenced the course of transformation. Although they shared progressive pedigrees, each culture embodied a distinctive vision for the Navy’s future.

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Learning War examines the U.S. Navy’s doctrinal development from 1898–1945 and explains why the Navy in that era was so successful as an organization at fostering innovation. A revolutionary study of one of history’s greatest success stories, this book draws profoundly important conclusions that give new insight, not only into how the Navy succeeded in becoming the best naval force in the world, but also into how modern organizations can exploit today’s rapid technological and social changes in their pursuit of success.
Trent Hone argues that the Navy created a sophisticated learning system in the early years of the twentieth century that led to repeated innovations in the development of surface warfare tactics and doctrine. The conditions that allowed these innovations to emerge are analyzed through a consideration of the Navy as a complex adaptive system. Learning War is the first major work to apply this complex learning approach to military history. This approach permits a richer understanding of the mechanisms that enable human organizations to evolve, innovate, and learn, and it offers new insights into the history of the United States Navy.

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This riveting biography details how Stanley “Swede” Vejtasa became a World War II naval hero. During the Battle of the Coral Sea, Swede flew an SBD Dauntless dive-bomber and helped sink Shoho, the first aircraft carrier lost by Japan in World War II. The next day, in that same Dauntless, he took off from USS Yorktown and out-flew and out-gunned three Japanese Zeros, making him the only dive bomber pilot to be awarded Navy Crosses for both bombing and aerial combat.
Months later, the day before the Battle of Santa Cruz, Swede was flying an F4F Wildcat fighter off USS Enterprise and had no recourse but to follow orders he knew to be insane. He and his squadron mates flew their predictably empty search legs and beyond, only to discover upon their return to Point Option in the dark, that Enterprise was nowhere to be found. Incredibly, Swede located the oil slick he had noticed seeping from Enterprise during a morning combat air patrol and was able to track it back to the carrier.
After their harrowing return, during the Battle of Santa Cruz, the fate of Enterprise, and by extension Guadalcanal, lay in the hands of that same Swede Vejtasa. He responded by single-handedly downing an unprecedented two Japanese dive bombers and five torpedo bombers attacking the carrier. Skipper Jimmy Flatley recognized that in all likelihood, Swede had saved Enterprise from destruction, and he recommended Swede for the Medal of Honor.

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Admiral Raoul Castex is France’s most important modern naval strategist. Military historian Eugenia Kiesling offers the essence of Castex’s original five volume study, Théories Stratégiques, in a useful one-volume abridgment and a very readable translation. It emphasizes the admiral’s method of strategic analysis while omitting most of the chapters of historical narrative. Included are chapters defining strategy and relating it to policy and geography, analyzing the role of maritime forces and the significance of command at sea, prescribing a theory of conduct of operations, and introducing Castex’s favorite themes: strategic manoeuvre, stratégie générale, and the theory of “perturbation”.
Two narrative chapters on German operations in the North Sea from 1914 to 1916 remain as examples of the author’s historical style. The introduction places Castex’s work in four distinct contexts: the international debate among naval theorists on the nature and importance of “command at sea,” the controversy within France between advocates of the “historical” and “material” schools of naval strategy, the contemporary concern over coordinated naval strategy for total war, and his contribution to the formulation of French strategy between the world wars. In an era of expanding global responsibilities and shrinking national economies, Castex’s balanced view of naval power offers many insights for today’s new generation of naval thinkers.

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The United States has the most expensive and seemingly military forces in the world. Yet, since World War II its military success rate has been fairly meager. The Korean War was a draw, Vietnam, Mogadishu, Afghanistan and Iraq were clear losses. Successes include: Iraq in 1991, the Balkans (Croatia and Kosovo), Panama, the initial takedowns of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and Libya.
Failures have been marked by the introduction of large numbers of conventional American ground troops, while successes have been characterized by the use of airpower, special operations forces, robust intelligence and sensor platforms, and the use of indigenous ground troops.
The vital interests of the United States are seldom at stake; instead, the US intervenes to punish aggressors or topple particularly inhumane dictators. As a result, the US and its allies strive to maintain public support, both at home and abroad. One of the surest ways to lose this support is to suffer high casualties or, worse, inflict them on the societies we are ostensibly attempting to help. The goal of limiting cost and casualties is hindered by the introduction of large numbers of conventional ground troops—especially in the xenophobic societies of the Middle East.
This desire to limit risk and cost, while still achieving definable political goals, results in a quandary. This is not a new problem, and as early as two millennia ago nations sought to achieve these dual and often contradictory goals against enemies with asymmetric strengths. Often, nations rejected taking on a powerful enemy head-to-head; instead, belligerents launched “second front operations”—they moved the war elsewhere to achieve local superiority. Not surprisingly, this strategy was especially appealing to nations possessing powerful navies. Britain, who controlled the seas for several centuries, was especially adept at using this “second front” strategy.
Today we find that although second fronts may not be necessary, the reasons for conducting such operations are still with us—the desire to limit risk while achieving measurable goals. For America that means eschewing the use of massive numbers of ground troops to invade and occupy a subject country, but instead using its asymmetric strengths—a combination of airpower, SOF, intelligence and indigenous ground troops to achieve political goals.

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