Research Catalog

Title

Marching through chaos : the descent of armies in theory and practice / John A. English.

Author

English, John A. (John Alan)

Publication

Westport, CT : Praeger, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

220 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

• The development of field armies has involved much more sophistication than generally supposed. In both practice and theory, army operations have been as knowledge-based and intellectually rigorous as any academic discipline, ensuring them an enduring place as a practical means of applying massive force. Fortunately, the NATO attempt to replace conventional armies with nuclear technology was never tested in a real war.
• But English suggests that the likelihood of deterrence continuing in war, because of its transmutability, also offers hope that it can be controlled in the future, as it was in the past, by social forces. This book offers a longer, more realistic view of war than that normally embraced by technocrats in search of better weapons and peacemakers in search of utopia.

Subject

Armies > History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: The Province of Chaos -- 1. Drum Taps: The Emergence of the Mass Army -- 2. Red Horse: The Transmutation of War -- 3. Staff and Steel: The Transformation of Warfare -- 4. Shield of Blows: The Refinement of Defense -- 5. Pale Horse: The Frangibility of Deterrence -- 6. Returning Echoes: The Perdurability of Ground Forces -- Epilogue: The Conventional Imperative.

ISBN

0275946576 (alk. paper)

LCCN

96029354

OCLC

ocm35172566

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries