ABSTRACT
MOST MILITARY HISTORY HAS BEEN THE RECORD OR ANALYSIS OF campaigns, leaders, strategy, tactics, weapons, and logistics. Most recent work continues to deal primarily with these matters, and some of it is quite admirable history. Yet this is what gets called" old" in this essay—old because it’s been around for as long as there has been history. What is “new” about much of the history of the military of late is a full-fledged concern with the rest of military history—that is, a fascination with the recruitment, training, and socialization of personnel, combat motivation, the effect of service and war on the individual soldier, the veteran, the internal dynamics of military institutions, inter- and intra-service tensions, civil-military relations, and the relationship between military systems and the greater society. Needless to say, some scholars explored such questions in the past Yet the 1960s and 1970s saw the appearance of many more such studies, the subjects of this essay. 1
