Customer Reviews

The Pentagon And The Presidency: Civil-military Relations From FDR To George W. Bush (Modern War Studies)

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I had the pleasure of reviewing this book while still in its manuscript form. If you have ever wondered what went on behind the scenes of the American Military, the interactions of a President and the key players of a military this book will not disappoint you.

Dr. Herspring's well researched book analyzes how the leadership of the Presidents conflicted or meshed with his top Military Advisors as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and how ultimately this affected the history and the military actions of our country.

A must read for any Civil-Military Relations or Political Science student.

This is a workman like book containing good information, but its style is somewhat pedestrian. Its author is quite fair in his treatment of U.S. Presidents from Roosevelt through G.W. Bush and their relationships to the military, but he should have exercised better judgment in the book's organization. In his efforts to be fair and impartial for all administrations, he essentially followed a pretty rigid format and devoted longer chapters to those administrations that lasted eight years and shorter chapters to those that lasted four years or less. This is fine in some ways, but unfortunate in others. For example, this reviewer would have preferred him to provide a much more detailed discussion of the Truman Presidency during which a unified Department of Defense was created by merging the War and Navy Departments over the strong objections of the Navy and at the same time the first efforts were made to create a unified military command structure creating the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the same vain, a more extensive treatment of the varying roles of the Secretaries of Defense (SECDEF) over these years would have been welcome. Certainly, the author provides enough material on this subject to tantalize the reader into wanting to read more about the subject. His premise that the relations between the Joint Chiefs and the various U.S. Presidents can be examined without also examining the role played by the SECDEFis just plain wrong. All in all this is a good book that could have been a lot better.