Customer Reviews

Uncle Sam's Little Wars: The Spanish-American War, Philippine Insurrection, and Boxer Rebellion, 1898-1902 (G.I. Series)

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The U.S. Army changed significantly from a frontier constabulary to a (relatively) modern force during the period of the Boxer Rebellion, the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection. Specialty uniforms for overseas service, the adoption of a wider range of specialty badges and a recognition of the need of a more practical hat all changed the look of the military. Illustrated with contemporary artwork and photographs, this book is a great reference on the Army prior to World War One.

The author has produced a slew of photo studies with incisive text on the life and times of the U.S. soldier, and his Spanish and Mexican californio predecessors also. His specialty is in gathering together contemporary source material for the illustrations. This method has the great virtue of showing what was what and when. But if no photos are available, then something may be omitted. All of these books are vertical studies covering a period of years. Though sometimes the illustrations serve to identify individual items of equipment, these works are not intended for that purpose. They are not catalogs intended for materiel collectors. They are of such a length and of such a level of detail that they will serve the purposes of the general reader with a curiousity about what grandaddy did in WW II or great great great grandaddy in the Civil War and what he looked like and how he lived. This is not to say that the specialist such as myself cannot find useful nuggets herein. I can. I use these for general surveys of periods I do not study in detail, such as the Civil War, and the War With Mexico, etc. And to look up the odd facts. I have yet to be disappointed with any of them.

This little (but not very inexpensive) book consists of a four-page summary of the America's turn-of-the-century colonial wars and a considerable, though very hit-or-miss, collection of captioned illustrations.

During my second read-through I started organizing the random facts into a coherent (though highly conjectural) system of understanding and I noted the few contradictory (at least by implication) captions. During my third and fourth read-throughs, I tweaked my assumptions and formed somewhat informed opinions regarding which captions were more likely to be entirely accurate. Hopefully I have constructed a passing understanding of the subject, but clearly this is an unnecessarily frustrating way to learn. Also, the editing is probably even worse than that of the average book I read.

There are many hints that the author has more than sufficient knowledge to answer my questions; he just seems to have assumed that his audience has no desire for a remotely systematic knowledge of the subject. However, if you are only interested in members of the "big three" branches of the U. S. Army and do not mind doing some deduction, then you may find it satisfactory.