• Selections from four legends in maritime and air strategy: Mahan, Corbett, Douhet and Mitchell
• Introduction by noted military strategist and author David Jablonsky

David Jablonsky has compiled the best writings of four of the most influential theorists of naval and air power in the past century. Alfred Thayer Mahan's Influence of Sea Power Upon History, Julian Corbett's Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Guilio Douhet's Command of the Air, and William "Billy" Mitchell's Winged Defense continue to have relevance for students and practitioners of naval and air strategy. They illustrate the continuity of strategic thought, even through current times of great and widespread change.

This book examines major historical post-war transition periods, with particular emphasis on the differences and similarities of the American experience after both world wars of this century and with the post-Cold War transition currently underway. Jablonsky provides a strategic vision that incorporates a multilateral, great-power approach to the international relations of our era. After every momentous event there is usually a transition period in which participants in the events, whether individuals or nation-states, attempt to chart their way into an unfamiliar future. For the United States in this century there are three such transitions, each focused on America's role in the international arena. After World War I, the American people specifically rejected the global role for the United States implicit in Woodrow Wilson's strategic vision of collective security. In contrast to this return to normalcy, after World War II the United States moved inexorably toward international leadership in response to the Soviet threat. The result was an acceptance of George Kennan's strategic vision of containing the Soviet Union on the Eurasian landmass and the subsequent bipolar confrontation of the two super-powers in a twilight war that lasted for more than 40 years. Sometime in the penultimate decade of this century, the United States and its allies won the Cold War. Once again the United States faces a transitional period, and the primary questions revolve around the management of power and America's role in global politics. In this regard, the Cold War set in train a blend of integrative and disintegrative forces and trends that are adding to the complex tensions of the current transition. The realist paradigm still pertains in this situation where nation-states are still the primary international actors. In such a world, American government elites must convince an electorate, increasingly conscious of the domestic threats to national security, of the need to continue to exercise global leadership in the management of power. The answer, as Jablonsky demonstrates, is a strategic vision that incorporates a multilateral, great-power approach to international relations.

This book examines the effect the Verbotzeit had on the leadership structure and on the consequent position of the party within the volkisch movement. Looking primarily at Bavaria and North Germany it examines the failed attempts that were made to prevent Hitler from filling the leadership void within both the NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers' Party) and the volkisch movement.

This collection of essays examines the development of Churchill and Hitler as strategic leaders and analyzes in particular the impact of their formative years on their leadership styles, operational codes, views on civil-military relations, and approaches to the conduct of war at strategic, operational and tactical levels. Ultimately, victory depended on the calculated use of all the means of national power - military, political, psychological and economic - to achieve the national end. These essays demonstrate that it was Churchill who best understood that calculation.

Influenced by what Clausewitz called the "remarkable trinity" - the government, the military and the people - David Jablonsky studies the interaction between Churchill, the British people and the army during World War II. He argues that the great British leader saw civilian supremacy as the rule in total war.

In this book a retired U.S. Army colonel and military historian takes a fresh look at Dwight D. Eisenhower's lasting military legacy, in light of his evolving approach to the concept of unified command. Examining Eisenhower's career from his West Point years to the passage of the 1958 Defense Reorganization Act, David Jablonsky explores Eisenhower's efforts to implement a unified command in the U.S. military--a concept that eventually led to the current organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and that, almost three decades after Eisenhower's presidency, played a major role in defense reorganization under the Goldwater-Nichols Act. In the new century, Eisenhower's approach continues to animate reform discussion at the highest level of government in terms of the interagency process.

In this report the author explores the concept on rogue or 'crazy' states in the international community, an important topic in the increasingly multipolar and dangerous world of the post-cold war era. In such an environment, the author concludes, after examining the progressive craziness of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler, the rational basis for strategy breaks down. Strategic rationality is simply not sufficient to gauge the behavior of such states in the international arena--a particularly dangerous turn of events in an era of mass destruction weapons proliferation.

Representing the state of the art in evolutionary paleobiology, this book provides a much-needed overview of this rapidly changing field. An influx of ideas and techniques both from other areas of biology and from within paleobiology itself have resulted in numerous recent advances, including increased recognition of the relationships between ecological and evolutionary theory, renewed vigor in the study of ecological communities over geologic timescales, increased understanding of biogeographical patterns, and new mathematical approaches to studying the form and structure of plants and animals.
Contributors to this volume--a veritable who's who of eminent researchers--present the results of original research and new theoretical developments, and provide directions for future studies. Individually wide ranging, these papers all share a debt to the work of James W. Valentine, one of the founders of modern evolutionary paleobiology. This volume's unified approach to the study of life on earth will be a major contribution to paleobiology, evolution, and ecology.