Since the first English settlers landed at Jamestown with the legacy of centuries of European warfare in tow, the military has been an omnipresent part of America. In American Military History: A Very Short Introduction, Joseph T. Glatthaar explores this relationship from its origins in the thirteen colonies to today's ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. During the Revolutionary War, tension grew between local militias and a standing army. The Founding Fathers attempted to strike a balance, enshrining an army, navy, and a "well-regulated Militia" in the Constitution. The US soon witnessed the rise of a professional military, a boon to its successes in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. However, after the Civil War, the US struggled to learn that the purpose of a peacetime army is to prepare for war. When war did arrive, it arrived with a vengeance, gutting the trenches of the Great War with effective innovations: tanks, planes, machine guns, and poison gas. The US embraced the technology that would win both world wars and change the nature of battle in the Second World War. The US emerged from World War II as the most powerful nation in the war, but over the next several decades it was forced to confront the limits of its power. The nuclear era brought encounters defined by stalemate-from the Cold War conflicts of Korea and Vietnam to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since 9/11, the US has been frustrated by unconventional warfare, including terrorism and cyberwar, largely negating the technological advantage it had held. Glatthaar examines all these challenges, looking to the future of the U.S. military and its often proud and complicated legacy.

As the American Civil War recedes into the past, popular fascination continues to rise. Once a matter that chiefly concerned veterans, separately organized North and South, who gathered to refight old battles and to memorialize the heroes and victims of war, the Civil War has gradually become part of a collective heritage. Issues raised by the war, including its causes and consequences, reverberate through contemporary society. Family and community connections with the war exist everywhere, as do battlefields, memorials, and other physical reminders of the conflict. We, as Americans, are fascinated by the sheer magnitude of the war fought over thousands of miles of American soil and resulting in awesome casualties. It was a gigantic national drama enacted by people who seem both contemporary and remote. Here for the first time, leading Civil War scholars gather to sort out the fact and fiction of our collective memories. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark E. Neely, Jr., Alan T. Nolan, John Y. Simon, James I. 'Bud' Robertson, Jr., Gary W. Gallagher, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.

In November, 1864, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman led an army of veteran Union troops through the heart of the Confederacy, leaving behind a path of destruction in an area that had known little of the hardships of war, devastating the morale of soldiers and civilians alike, and hastening the end of the war. In this intensively researched and carefully detailed study, chosen by Civil War Magazine as one of the best one hundred books ever written about the Civil War, Joseph T. Glatthaar examines the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns from the perspective of the common soldiers in Sherman's army, seeking, above all, to understand why they did what they did.

Glatthaar graphically describes the duties and deprivations of the march, the boredom and frustration of camp life, and the utter confusion and pure chance of battle. Quoting heavily from the letters and diaries of Sherman's men, he reveals the fears, motivations, and aspirations of the Union soldiers and explores their attitudes toward their comrades, toward blacks and southern whites, and toward the war, its destruction, and the forthcoming reconstruction.

In this sophisticated quantitative study, Joseph T. Glatthaar provides a comprehensive narrative and statistical analysis of many key aspects of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Serving as a companion to Glatthaar's General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse, this book presents Glatthaar's supporting data and major conclusions in extensive and extraordinary detail. While gathering research materials for General Lee's Army, Glatthaar compiled quantitative data on the background and service of 600 randomly selected soldiers--150 artillerists, 150 cavalrymen, and 300 infantrymen--affording him fascinating insight into the prewar and wartime experience of Lee's troops. Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia presents the full details of this fresh, important primary research in a way that is useful to scholars and students and appeals to anyone with a serious interest in the Civil War. While confirming much of what is believed about the army, Glatthaar's evidence challenges some conventional thinking in significant ways, such as showing that nearly half of all Lee's soldiers lived in slaveholding households (a number higher than previously thought), and provides a broader and fuller portrait of the men who served under General Lee.

Combining compelling narrative and grand historical sweep, "Forgotten Allies "offers a vivid account of the Oneida Indians, forgotten heroes of the American Revolution who risked their homeland, their culture, and their lives to join in a war that gave birth to a new nation at the expense of their own. Revealing for the first time the full sacrifice of the Oneidas in securing independence, "Forgotten Allies "offers poignant insights about Oneida culture and how it changed and adjusted in the wake of nearly two centuries of contact with European-American colonists. It depicts the resolve of an Indian nation that fought alongside the revolutionaries as their valuable allies, only to be erased from America's collective historical memory. Beautifully written, "Forgotten Allies "recaptures these lost memories and makes certain that the Oneidas' incredible story is finally told in its entirety, thereby deepening and enriching our understanding of the American experience.

Sixteen months after the start of the American Civil War, the Federal government, having vastly underestimated the length and manpower demands of the war, began to recruit black soldiers. This revolutionary policy gave 180,000 free blacks and former slaves the opportunity to prove themselves on the battlefield as part of the United States Colored Troops. By the end of the war, 37,000 in their ranks had given their lives for the cause of freedom. In Forged in Battle, originally published in 1990, award-winning historian Joseph T. Glatthaar re-creates the events that gave these troops and their 7,000 white officers justifiable pride in their contributions to the Union victory and hope of equality in the years to come. Unfortunately, as Glatthaar poignantly demonstrates, memory of the United States Colored Troops' heroic sacrifices soon faded behind the prejudice that would plague the armed forces for another century.