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Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale holds a unique position in the roster of dis- tinguished American naval officers of the last century. In "Reflections on the Stockdale Legacy," Martin L. Cook, current holder of the Stockdale Chair of Professional Military Ethics at the Naval War College, vividly recalls the extraor- dinary moral courage and leadership displayed by Stockdale during his nearly eight years of captivity in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

The U.S. Naval Institute on Naval Tactics is a collection of thirteen essays as- sembled by Captain Wayne Hughes, USN (Ret.)—author of several books, most notably Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat and Military Modeling for Deci- sion Making. Captain Hughes is also an accomplished naval officer, having served as commanding officer of USS Hummingbird (MSC 192) and USS Morton (DD 948). Notable authors appearing in On Tactics include Admiral Woodward, RN, who commanded British forces in the Falklands War, and Giuseppe Fioravanzo, Admiral of the Fleet, Italian Navy. On Tactics is part of the U.S. Naval Institute's new Wheel Books series, which is a collection of books containing some of the Naval Institute's most well-regarded articles from Proceedings—and other sources— on such topics as naval leadership, command, strategy, and cooperation.

No longer distributed to depository libraries in a print version, ; Includes bibliographies. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; Electronic serial mode of access: World Wide Web via InfoTrac's "General Reference Center Gold" and ProQuest Research Library databases.

Commander Henry J. Hendrix has writ- ten a neat monograph based on his doctoral work. He makes two related arguments: first, that one cannot understand the diplomatic style of President Theodore Roosevelt without first understanding his attitude toward the efficacy and use of naval power; and second, that the existing literature has not adequately integrated naval and military historical methods of analysis with existing diplomatic historical approaches. Consequently, previous interpretations of Roosevelt's foreign policy decisions, as they relate to incidents that involved the use of naval power, are incomplete, precisely because they do not fuse the diplomatic and political with the naval—especially the perspective reflected by the navalist attitudes of Theodore Roosevelt.

Tom Ricks has earned over the past two decades a justified reputation as a thorough and knowledgeable military correspondent. His latest work ad- dresses the decline in the competence of generals in the U.S. Army, which he regards as a major and timely issue. As is to be expected from such a thought- ful journalist, Ricks has produced an important book that should spark debate and discussion not only among the Army's leaders but also among those of the other services. The Generals is well written and at times insightful. Indeed, it makes a plausible case that there is something flawed in the choice and education of Army leaders.

What is it like to lead and work for America's largest privately owned company, one that finds, transports, processes, and ultimately delivers a product essential to the operation of almost everything in the developed world? This product is found hundreds to thousands of feet below the surface of the earth, from the deserts of the Middle East to the Arctic, as well as many miles beneath the ocean. It is located in areas of the world that are isolated, disease ridden, politically unstable, and often right in the middle of armed conflicts.

Since the Cold War ended, twelve of NATO's twenty-six member states have suspended compulsory military service or announced plans to phase it out, thus joining the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Luxembourg in the family of nations with all-volunteer armed forces (AVFs). Most of NATO's other members are deeply reducing the number of conscripts they call up each year, relying increasingly on volunteers to fill their military ranks.

Skeptics of disarmament treaties, such as Richard Pearl, have long argued that these treaties make a nation weaker by depriving it of the means of self-defense. John Kuehn, former naval aviator and presently professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, in Fort Leaven- worth, Kansas, is far more subtle in this excellent book. He shows how the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921 froze battleship construction and yet made the U.S. Navy stronger by 1941. While it is never easy to prove something so counterintuitive, Kuehn does it hands down.

"The principle of aiming everything at the enemy's center of gravity admits of only one exception—that is, when sec- ondary operations look exceptionally rewarding." This classic dictum, given to us by the great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, provides the impetus behind this book. Originally conceived as a case study for inclusion in the Strategy and Policy curriculum at the U.S. Naval War College, this historical work covers the operations in Norway during the spring of 1940, one of the most overlooked campaigns of the Sec- ond World War.

In 2012, Tim Heath, then an analyst at U.S. Pacific Command, published a scholarly article that considered whether in fact China had a national strategy ("What Does China Want? Discerning the PRC's National Strategy," Asian Security 8, no. 1 [2012], pp. 54–72). Drawing extensively from Chinese sources, Heath argued that China did not have a formal national strategy document but did outline the essential elements of a national strategy in the authoritative writings of the Chinese Communist Party.

General William Westmoreland, the American commander of Military As- sistance Command Vietnam (MACV) from 1964 through 1968, remains one of the most contentious personalities of the Vietnam War, still the subject of intense debate among veterans and historians of the war. Prevalent still is the view that "Westy" could not see the forest for the trees, or vice versa, and disastrously lacked strategic vision and operational creativity owing to his parochial focus on employing Cold War "big unit" doctrine and attrition to combat an insurgent war of unification.

Normally, a recommendation regarding for which audience a book is best suited comes at the end of the review. In this case, it comes first because Professor Aaron Friedberg provides a tight mono- graph that illuminates areas of great misunderstanding to a large population in the policy and defense communities: the debate over the concept of Air-Sea Battle (ASB) and the vernacular of mod- ern maritime strategy.

Dr. Jörg Muth has written a serious comparative account of the German and American precommissioning courses and general staff colleges from 1901 to 1940. Any new work compar- ing German and American military effectiveness in the first half of the twentieth century is guaranteed to be controversial, and Muth certainly achieves controversy. However, there exists a significant revisionist school of thought that offers an interpreta- tion much different from Muth's.