Product Description

This new paperback edition of Stephen E. Ambrose's highly regarded history of the United States Military Academy features the original foreword by Dwight D. Eisenhower and a new afterword by former West Point superintendent Andrew J. Goodpaster.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1032332 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Amazon.com
Duty, Honor, Country: the motto of the United States Military Academy has resounded for more than 200 years. Stephen Ambrose charts the history of West Point from its origins in the Revolutionary War--when students attached to engineering and artillery regiments studied the rudiments of strategy, but mostly came and went as they pleased--to the academy's time of crisis during the Vietnam War. Ambrose's narrative centers on West Point's superintendents, the Army officers who emphasized both tradition and innovation over the years--men such as Sylvanus Thayer, who commanded from 1817 to 1833 and who introduced customs that are still observed today; and Douglas MacArthur, who joined personal flamboyance with a deep-seated commitment to martial, academic, and athletic excellence. (Among MacArthur's other contributions was his codification of the "honor system," a set of self-policing regulations that distinguishes West Point from any other nation's military colleges.) Ambrose does not gloss over the academy's less exalted moments, especially the frictions brought on by the Civil War, when many Northerners accused West Point as a whole of being proslavery. Writing in an afterword that brings the history of the academy to the present, former superintendent Andrew Goodpaster confronts such matters as the honor code scandal of 1976 and the cultural changes brought on by the admission of women to the academy in the same year. Yet this book is a fitting celebration of an institution that has been of central importance to the American military. Originally published in 1966, at the start of his career, Duty, Honor, Country shows Stephen Ambrose's skills as researcher and popularizer, skills that he would go on to develop in such later books as Undaunted Courage and Citizen Soldiers. --Gregory McNamee

Review
Throughout history every great nation has kept in its treasure-chest an academy for advanced learning and military training. Steven Ambrose's history leaves the reader with a greater understanding of the relationship between our treasure, West Point, and the society it supports. Parameters There have been many other histories of West Point, but this is the best... From this excellent book every American will find interest and take pride in this truly national institution that has played so great a part in the building of the country. Historical Time The title of this first-rate account of the United States Military Academy is drawn from the Academy's motto... [Ambrose] follows the long gray line through history, skillfully re-creating the administrations of West Point's outstanding superintendents (Sylvanus Thayer and Douglas MacArthur), telling some amusing anecdotes about cadets 'who simply refused to conform to the West Point mold' (James McNeill Whistler and Edgar Allan Poe). New York Times Book Review The conception of West Point, as Ambrose makes clear in his short history of the Military Academy, was immaculately Jeffersonian. It was a school to train engineers-that most liberal, nonaristocratic, and socially useful branch of the military service-not in order to create a corps d'elite but to provide the reservoir of military expertise which was needed if the militia ideal were to become a practical reality... Ambrose has told this story clearly and well; he is at his best in tying it to the larger context of American politics, social attitudes, and higher education. Journal of American History A welcome addition to the growing literature on military education. Ambrose covers the whole history of West Point, from the first feeble beginnings under President Jefferson down to the present. He has carefully examined both the published and unpublished sources and has rounded out the basic data with numerous interviews. Journal of Higher Education

About the Author
Stephen E. Ambrose is the author of many books on American history, including Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West and Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945. He is also the founder of the National D-Day Museum, in New Orleans.