In their new survey for Routledge, military historians Matthew Muehlbauer and David Ulbrich move beyond a simplified critique of Russell F. Weigley’s critical “American Way of War” thesis to offer a reassessment of how the construct evolved from a number of original influences to take on various forms and applications as circumstances dictated.  The end result is a view of American military affairs that is marked by an inherent flexibility that has on occasion been hamstrung by misperceptions on the part of the nation’s civilian and military leaders.  Based on a wide range of secondary scholarship in American Military History, Ways of War: American Military History from the Colonial Era to the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2013) offers far more analytical and narrative detail than many other like-minded surveys, making it a worthy candidate for supplementing and succeeding Weigley’s original 1973 work.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history