American Military History Volume 1: The United States Army and the Forging of a Nation, 1775-1917

American Military History provides the United States Army—in particular, its young officers,NCOs, and cadets—with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of MilitaryHistory first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it hasgone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same.Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and thisnew edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose.The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows largerand more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent editionended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions andof fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action.This first volume covers the Army’s history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World WarI. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionaryforces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of WarElihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army ofthe future. But world war—global war—was still to come. The second volume of this new editionwill take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009. Read more