April 22, 2010
Army’s way of war is topic of talk
Brian McAllister Linn, the Ralph R. Thomas Professor in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University and president of the Society for Military History, will speak on The Army’s Way of War at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 29 in 110 Kane. In his talk, Linn will discuss his new book, The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War. In the face of radically new ways of waging war, Linn surveys the past assumptions–and errors–that underlie the army’s many visions of warfare up to the present day.
Linn 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. He 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.
Linn was born in the Territory of Hawaii and completed his graduate work at Ohio State University under the direction of Allan R. Millett. He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and was a visiting professor at the Army War College.
He is the only author to have twice been awarded the Society for Military History’s book prize. Linn is the author of Guardians of Empire:The US War in the Pacific 1902-1940 and The Philippine War 1899-1902, which is on the Army Chief of Staff’s reading list.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
