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Brian McAllister Linn

The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War Paperback – September 30, 2009

by Brian McAllister Linn (Author)

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From Lexington and Gettysburg to Normandy and Iraq, the wars of the United States have defined the nation. But after the guns fall silent, the army searches the lessons of past conflicts in order to prepare for the next clash of arms. In the echo of battle, the army develops the strategies, weapons, doctrine, and commanders that it hopes will guarantee a future victory.

In the face of radically new ways of waging war, Brian Linn surveys the past assumptions--and errors--that underlie the army's many visions of warfare up to the present day. He explores the army's forgotten heritage of deterrence, its long experience with counter-guerrilla operations, and its successive efforts to transform itself. Distinguishing three martial traditions--each with its own concept of warfare, its own strategic views, and its own excuses for failure--he locates the visionaries who prepared the army for its battlefield triumphs and the reactionaries whose mistakes contributed to its defeats.

Discussing commanders as diverse as Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Colin Powell, and technologies from coastal artillery to the Abrams tank, he shows how leadership and weaponry have continually altered the army's approach to conflict. And he demonstrates the army's habit of preparing for wars that seldom occur, while ignoring those it must actually fight. Based on exhaustive research and interviews, The Echo of Battle provides an unprecedented reinterpretation of how the U.S. Army has waged war in the past and how it is meeting the new challenges of tomorrow.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harvard University Press
Publication date

September 30, 2009
Dimensions

5.25 x 1 x 7.75 inches
ISBN-10

0674034791
ISBN-13

978-0674034792
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“The Echo of Battle is a masterpiece. With its appearance, Brian Linn establishes himself as the preeminent military historian of his generation.”―Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

“Brian Linn's The Echo of Battle is one of the most significant books ever written on the American military experience. It places him on the top rung of military historians.”―Allan R. Millett, University of New Orleans

“Brian Linn's account of the Army's long internal debate over its mission and fighting concepts is timely and provocative. His interpretation renders a tough judgment of the service's past efforts to adapt to change. The Echo of Battle should make today's discussions of how the armed forces will visualize and prepare for future conflict better informed and more self-aware.”―L. D. Holder, LTG, US Army (retired)

“Brilliant, original, and very entertaining. The Echo of Battle is an extraordinary lens that brings today's U.S. Army into sharp focus by looking into our past. Brian Linn has written a masterful book.”―Rick Atkinson, author of An Army at Dawn

“An unsettling but stimulating review of American military planning.”―Kirkus Reviews

“This is a well-researched book, full of insight and good sense.”―Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs

“I expect this book to stir considerable controversy and healthy debate. Younger officers may well come to view it as a Bible of sorts. I expect it to sell very well at the Army’s educational institutions where I have been recommending it since reading the first chapter. It has the potential to transform professional thinking in the most positive way. This book demonstrates Linn’s mastery of the language of the profession in readable English, something all too rarely seen.”―Douglas V. Johnson II, Journal of Military History

“[A] remarkable new history of how the army anticipated future wars and analyzed past ones...Linn's assessment of army thought in the post-Cold War era is especially enlightening. This is an exceedingly well-crafted book that belongs on all shelves supporting the history of the U.S. military tradition.”―E. A. Goedeken, Choice

“Few books could be more timely than Brian Linn's The Echo of Battle: The Army's Way of War. Linn has written a serious and comprehensive intellectual history of the U.S. Army. He traces Army thought from the American Revolution to the war on terrorism. It is hard to imagine a scholar more suited to take on the task...Linn's overview of the Army's efforts to deal with the new world disorder is unparalleled.”―James Jay Carafano, Army

About the Author

Brian McAllister Linn is Professor of History at Texas A&M University.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press (September 30, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674034791
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674034792
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1 x 7.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,167,678 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,893 in Military Strategy History (Books)
- #13,000 in American Military History
- #34,600 in Engineering (Books)

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Thomas M. Magee

The Army as an institution

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book offers what few others do. It isn't a history of the wars and/or the personalities of those wars. This book is a history of the thought patterns in the bureaucracy of the Army. The author says it is an intellectual history of the army. He sets the thought patterns into three camps, the guardians, the managers, the the heroes. Each camp viewed the war a little differently based off of their core beliefs. What I thought was interesting is how the bureaucracy dealt with the issues of the day and how to deal with them. Early on the common thought was a series of forts would protect us. Later their interpretation pit themselves against each other. I thought it was funny how facts and roaring battles in Europe back in 1940 didn't change their thought. They believed what they believed and facts were not going to move them. How insurrection fit into their strategic thought in many ways hadn't changed since the Indian wars. The author does a great job of showing how the army got to where it is today through the cold war. He kind of left the war on terrorism hanging out there. There were no firm conclusions on that. I guess that is volume 2. If you want to learn about the Army as an institution this is your book.

2 people found this helpful

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D-Bo

A Fresh Look at the Army as an Institution

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2008

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It is always refreshing when an author tackling a topic takes a fresh tack or introduces a new perspective.

Brian Linn has done just that, in his book The Echo of Battle. This history of the U.S. Army is not a battle history, reminding the reader of the Army's actions from Valley Forge to the march to Baghdad, with stops at Gettysburg, Meuse-Argonne, Bastogne and the Ia Drang. Instead, he views the Army as an institution, and tries to identify what elements have remained constant over its 200+ year history, and as it has evolved, along with the nation it defends.

To that end, Linn suggests that there are three broad strands of thinking within the Army---Guardians, Managers, and Heroes. Each, he notes has its strengths, but also its weaknesses, and more importantly, its blind spots. These blind spots, often tied to bureaucratic origins and perspectives, are remarkably constant and consistent over the course of the Army's history. Reality is bent to fit the procrustean bed of each strand's perspective, rather than compelling each to reassess its shibboleths and received truths.

As a result, the Army repeatedly goes through similar fits and starts of reform, and often makes similar mistakes. The current debate about whether the Army should focus on counter-insurgency or high-intensity combat is not a new one, but instead a replaying of a longstanding argument among the strands.

Linn's volume provides much food for thought, and complements more traditional battle histories of the Army. It is a valuable addition for anyone interested in studying the military as an institution.

9 people found this helpful

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A non-battle military history

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2008

Verified Purchase

Brian McAllister Linn has written an excellent book -- not on America's wars, but on how military theorists have interpreted the lessons of their wars, and then developed ideas on how the "next war" would be fought and what needed to be done to prepare. At root Linn argues that while many historians focus on the relatively few years of actual conflict in order to determine an American "way of war," he argues, "that the Army's way of war has been shaped as much or more by its peacetime intellectual debate as by its wartime service....In short , the army's peacetime thinkers, as much as its wartime commanders, have defined the service's martial identity, identified as its mission, determined professional standards, and created its distinct war of war."

Linn concludes that while the officer corps shares a unifying ethic and ideology, it has never shared a unifying philosophy of war. In fact the author argues that the Army's thinkers generally fall into three groups with a differing approach to war. First are the Guardians, who said the war was an art and science, but that the art succeeded primarily through the application of science. The second group is the Heroes (read George S. Patton); they believe success in war depends on the human element and they reduced war to the idea of it being armed violence directed towards the achievement of an end. The last group is called the managers (read George C. Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower); this group believes superior administration, resources, and detailed planning secure victory.

Linn's historical approach is to analyze the writings of a variety of military authors and theorists IN BETWEEN WARS and then explore how the various groups interpreted previous wars and developed recommendations on what needed to be done to prepare for their version of what war would be. In other words this history is more a review of military thinking vice a review of war. In this sense the book makes for interesting reading simply because it is not a traditional approach to analyzing how the US Army fights. At the same time I believe Linn does make pretty good argument that if you want to understand how the Army fights, you need to know how it prepared.

The only issue I have is that I believe his intellectual framework for grouping military thinkers is a bit simplistic. Although intellectually you may be able to group them, in practice no single approach is a war winner; it is the mix, depending on a given situation, that leads to success or failure. Although one may prefer a Patton to an Eisenhower, it's doubtful WWII could have been won without the successful combination of the two (and many others).

The bottom line is that I would recommend this book to anyone studying how the US Army fights, in addition to more traditional war and battle histories, in order to have better understanding of an American way of war.

21 people found this helpful

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Jens-Uwe Rohrmoser

gutes Buch

Reviewed in Germany on February 5, 2014

Verified Purchase

Interessant geschrieben, gibt es einen Eindruck davon warum die USA so Denken und Handeln wenn es um Verteidigung geht, wie sie es tun.

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