The United States Army is a product of our society and its values (for better and for worse), but it also makes claims to shape our society – and of course to defend it. What is the relationship between military service and citizenship? How do we as Americans balance the competing demands of liberty and equality when we establish armed forces to defend us? How are our changing ideas about race, gender, andcivil rights reflected in our military? These are just some of the important questions raised by Beth Bailey‘s America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (Harvard UP, 2009).

By focusing on the transition from a draft army to a volunteer force in 1973 and the ongoing efforts of the United States Army to reform itself and recruit soldiers, Bailey has in effect written an institutional history of the Army over the past four decades. It is a book that should be (andis being) avidly read by members of the armed forces and military bureaucracies as well as citizens interested in the role of our armed forces from a social as well as a military perspective.