Though the medium of wireless communication was in relative infancy during World War I, the technology could have made a profound impact on tactical operations and on the entire strategic conduct of the war. Providing details on how and why the technology did not fulfill its promise as a great military tool until years later, the book points primarily to the British Army's institutional bias against wireless communication as the technology's downfall, reinforced by the crude, unreliable wireless sets with which the army began the war. It also demonstrates how improved wireless communications between infantry, command, artillery and air observation could have improved the flexibility, accuracy and effectiveness of the British military strategy in the German Spring Offensive, the Hundred Days Counteroffensive and the battles of the Somme, Passchendaele, and Cambrai.

Major General George Owen Squier was a remarkable man. During the 1920s and 30s, he was one of the most famous men in America and abroad, as a scientist, soldier, military strategist, electrical communications expert and inventor, aeronautical pioneer, diplomat, and philanthropist. He rose from humble beginnings in the countryside of Michigan to the position of Chief Signal Officer of the United States Army. He led the effort in World War I to equip the United States and its allies with American made airplanes and engines, an effort which started slowly but at the time of the Armistice was rapidly coming to fruition. He also equipped American forces with modern communications, the first belligerent in the war to do so. As an inventor he is not well known today compared to his contemporaries Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright Brothers, who respected his intellect and originality. Yet his inventions in communications technology are fundamental to today's telephone system and were the technical basis for the company he founded, Muzak. Despite his many achievements no biography of George Squier has, before now, been published.