Description: Fort Leavenworth, where Roger J. Spiller taught the army's finest for twenty-five years, is indeed a "school of war." There, among military professionals who had experienced war firsthand, Spiller honed his remarkable skills as an analyst and historian, scholar and teacher--skills that have made him one of the best-known and respected military historians of our day. This volume brings together Spiller's original and thought-provoking explorations of wars big and small and armies glorified and ignored. For each of these essays--whether on urban warfare or the Vietnam syndrome, battlefield psychology or the making of military history, and underrated vs. overrated generals--Spiller revisits his topic and his thinking, bringing fresh insight and a new context to an incomparable body of work. In the School of War further reveals the complex relationship between past and present in an understanding of the nature of war.
Review Quotes: "Military historians with imaginative, skeptical minds are an invaluable asset, and Roger Spiller has such a mind, as these essays reveal. I am truly grateful that military history contains a few bright practitioners, like Roger Spiller, who provoke us to think anew."--John W. Shy, professor emeritus of history, University of Michigan-- (9/28/2009 12:00:00 AM)