Preface

       Table of Contents

      The story of the United States Army is always growing and changing. Historians constantly seek to reinterpret the past while accumulating new facts as America’s Army continues to be challenged on new foreign battlefields. Nor does the Army, as an institution, ever stand still. It necessarily changes its organization, materiel, doctrine, and composition to cope with an ever-changing world of current conflict and potential danger. Thus, the Center of Military History is committed to preparing new editions of American Military History as we seek to correct past mistakes, reinterpret new facts, and bring the Army’s story up to date. This new edition of that textbook, an important element in soldier and officer education since 1956, seeks to do just that.

      This edition of American Military History builds on the previous edition, published in 2005, and expands its coverage to include an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009. This expanded section is necessarily only