Are television and the Internet weaning too many readers away from books, as many deep thinkers claim? Not if the astonishing number of volumes being produced by publishers both large and small is any guide. In one area in particular the production line shows no sign of slowing—there seems to be an insatiable appetite for books about the profession of arms. Stories of past wars and past heroes, novels about men in uniform, unit histories, reports of political-military dust-ups at home, analyses of new weapons and designs for the future, studies of the endless list of current conflicts—the catalog is long and eclectic.
Renowned historian David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning John Adams, a long-time presence on last year's best-seller lists, is as fine an account of the early years of the U.S. Navy as it is a remarkably readable biography of one of the nation's Founding Fathers. Adams "knew well the importance of the sea for New England and for all of America," said professor John Hattendorf in his review. Service as an ambassador, member of Congress, vice president, and president never stopped him from pointing out "the importance of a navy to the young republic he helped create. . . . John Adams may not have been a sailor, but to him the Navy owes much. Every U.S. naval officer and seaman should understand John Adams' contribution to our national and naval heritage."
Another non-sailor, English diarist Samuel Pepys, was equally influential in the naval politics of 17th-century Britain. In Samuel Pepys: A Life, biographer Stephen Coote explains how Pepys's intense curiosity and his talent for writing "condensed, precise English" helped him build the Admiralty into "the unique, ruthlessly controlling force of the entire naval service." In his diary, Pepys himself described his passion for neatness in language as a "strange folly." In his review in Naval History, professor Robert C. Jones said that folly was instrumental in making the British Navy into "one of the greatest fighting forces in western Europe."
Centuries later, nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them on target spoke much louder than Pepys's precise phrases in Pentagon debates about the changing role of naval aviation. It was not the Korean War that protected the U.S. carrier force from Air Force and Defense Department sniping, argued retired Navy Vice Admiral Jerry Miller in Nuclear Weapons and Aircraft Carriers: How the Bomb Saved Naval Aviation; it was the Navy's ability to deliver nuclear weapons. Today, in Admiral Miller's view, smart bombs and guided missiles largely have replaced nuclear weapons. Whether tactical nukes ever would be used in the war against terrorism is indeed questionable. Even so, said Norman Friedman in his review, "The subject of nuclear weapons leads to the central question of war, which is about how inflicting some level of damage on some part of an enemy force or homeland leads to a desired outcome. Read this book. It raises the questions that matter."
The $5 Billion Misunderstanding: The Collapse of the Navy's A-12 Stealth Bomber Program covers a narrower subject than the survival of naval aviation. The story, as told by James P. Stevenson, offers a dismaying look at the military's Byzantine system for procuring weapons. Political maneuvering, interservice squabbling, and some contractor chicanery led up to then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney's abrupt cancellation of the program.
The author, who began his research on the premise that the Pentagon was manned by honest, highly professional officers, soon changed his mind. He became convinced that the Pentagon "is a Machiavellian culture ... without a moral compass." As if he does not have enough legal problems to deal with at the moment, Vice President Dick Cheney's difficulties arising from the A-12 debacle have yet to be resolved.
A much brighter look at the Navy's planes and pilots can be found in U.S. Naval Aviation, edited by H. Hill Goodspeed and Rick Burgess. This hefty coffee-table volume of pictures and text, said retired Naval Reserve Captain Rosario Rausa in his review, "is a marvelous salute to the air arm of the U.S. Navy, its leaders, air crews, and the supporting personnel who have served in naval aviation from its inception in 1911 to the present day." Outstanding photography and fine writing make this book "a valuable addition to anyone's library, but an absolute treasure to those who served in naval air."
The Human Face of Warfare: Killing, Fear and Chaos in Battle is a welcome reminder of the hard fact that behind all Pentagon politics and all the academic studies of the military services are the individual men and women who fight the world's wars. Organized from papers delivered at a wide-ranging Australian conference, this book, said political science professor John Williams in his review, "is greater than the sum of its parts." Those parts dispel, among other things, erroneous myths about the psychology and physiology of men in close combat; the familiar contention that citizens of Westem democracies will not tolerate many casualties and the misleading idea that a so-called surgical strike can avoid collateral damage. "One notes there is collateral damage even in surgery," said Williams. "This book is not always pleasant reading.... But it is important reading for leaders who may have to send others into battle or lead them personally in combat."
Unlike male cryptographers during World War II, women scientists had to battle on two fronts before being allowed to work for the armed services. Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II documents how women first had to fight for the right to study for their chosen professions. Once they finished their schooling, they faced a second hurdle. "Before admitting women," says military historian Kathleen Broome Williams, "the Navy scraped the bottom of the barrel." Even men guilty of fraud were accepted in the Hydrographic Office, for example, before women of obvious talent were hired. But the women persisted. They proved valuable as meteorologists, mathematicians, computer programmers and cryptographers. Only after the war, when these "improbable warriors" and others like them gave "their wartime jobs back to men," says the author, "did the influence of their accomplishments begin to be felt."
In Pearl Harbor Betrayed, Michael Gannon points out that defenders of President Franklin Roosevelt were fortunate his critics put so much emphasis on conspiracy theories. Negligence and incompetence among politicians and the military at home, Gannon insists, equaled any errors on the part of the commanders in Hawaii: Army Lieutenant General Walter Short and Navy Admiral Husband Kimmel. Gannon does not whitewash them, said Richard Frank in his review. But "[Gannon] demolishes the latest permutations of the conspiracy theories.... We can hope that this compelling book will mark a turning point in this lingering controversy away from conspiracy theories toward an evenhanded appraisal of the responsibilities of all U.S. officials at the time of the attack."
Long after Pearl Harbor, the complications of national security policy continue to offer a limitless source of material for talented reporters. War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals, by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Halberstam, is a brisk, readable account of the administrations of two presidents: George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "Halberstam vividly describes the various forces at play when the United States intervenes abroad," said retired Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander Paul G. Johnson in his review. "The role of Congress, the cautiousness of the Pentagon post-Vietnam and post-Somalia, and the crucial role played (or in some cases, not played) by the President" are subjected to a thorough critique.
Unhampered by the equivalent of U.S. security reviews, French Admiral Jacques Lanxade's memoir, Quand le Monde a Bascule ("When the World Was Turned Upside Down"), is a remarkably frank report of international affairs as seen from Paris after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The only naval officer to have served both as his president's military advisor and Chief of the General Staff, Admiral Lanxade, said retired Navy Rear Admiral Philip A. Dur in his review, writes as an articulate raconteur. "[He] admits his attitudes on the value of an enduring alliance with the United States were nurtured by his experiences as a naval officer.... Because the French Navy has been closer to its U.S. and NATO counterparts than the other French military services, the accession of a naval officer to the most influential French military positions was a fortuitous development. . . A careful read of this book goes a long way toward clarifying the complexities that underlie French security policy."
The third volume of Russia's Arms and Technologies, the XXI Century Encyclopedia, is a massive and expensive ($495) official study devoted to all aspects of Russia's naval weapons and their associated systems. Detailed information, much of it made public for the first time, covers such categories as missiles, torpedoes, communication systems, and some previously unknown weapons, including an antitorpedo torpedo. "Does all of this matter, with the Russian Navy grossly underfunded and with the Cold War over?" Reviewer Norman Friedman gave an unequivocal answer to his own question. The Russians not only are potential coalition partners, but they also "continue to supply their weapons to many other navies.... Americans will find Russiansupplied equipment on board many ships with which they may cooperate or on board the ships of potential adversaries. It will be very useful to have an unclassified handbook describing these weapons."
While the media, of necessity, concentrate on today's conflicts, novelists help to keep earlier wars from fading into a half-forgotten past. Men who fought in Vietnam can revive old memories with James Webb's fast-paced, far-ranging novel Lost Soldiers. Taking off from the area the 1st Marine Division knew as the "Arizona Territory," Webb leads readers on a picaresque journey to distant places—Moscow, Hawaii, Saigon, the Philippines, and Thailand. Jim Webb, says retired Marine Major General Jarvis Lynch in his review, "has the rare talent of being able to draw the reader into a scene, be it a Saigon disco, a Vietnamese village, a slaughter pen in Thailand, or a general's quarters with a sweeping view of Pearl Harbor ... With the gift of a true literary artist he captures the surrounding environment of sights, sounds, smells, and emotions."
As accurately as Lost Soldiers recalls Vietnam's war on the ground, Navy Commander Ward Carroll's novel Punk's War describes the undeclared war in the no-fly zone over Iraq. Carrier life—from claustrophobic pilots' quarters to the intricate ballet performed by men and women on the flight deck as fighters are launched and trapped—is spelled out in the breezy, irreverent lingo of the actors themselves. Surface warriors and aviators snipe at each other; Air Force officers foul up joint cooperation; planes crash; shore leave turns into drunken brawls. And always the pilots gripe and talk about quitting the Navy. Some do leave, but most stay. Their reward, as this novel makes abundantly clear, comes from the dangerous excitement of naval aviation.