Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 138

modern European history. His next entry to the Penguin
series, Fractured Continent: Europe 1950—The Present, is
eagerly anticipated.

Mark Montesclaros, Fort Gordon, Georgia

THE ASHGATE RESEARCH
COMPANION TO THE KOREAN WAR

Donald W. Boose, Edited by James I. Matray,
Ashgate Publishing Company, Burlington, Vermont,
2014, 494 pages

“T

he wrong war, at the wrong place, at the
wrong time, and with the wrong enemy,”
said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gen. Omar Bradley, often misquoted as in reference
to the Korean War. He was in fact talking about the
possible expansion of
the Korean War into
China, as was advocated by Gen. Douglas
MacArthur before being fired by President
Harry Truman.
Mistakes such as this
are common concerning the Korean War, a
war often called “the
forgotten war.” That
the war is forgotten
is as much a consequence of circumstance as it is of a national narrow attention span, what
with the concept of the heroic war of World War II
and the tragic mistake of Vietnam. The Korean War
was short, brutal, and bloody, and The Ashgate Research
Companion to the Korean War relates a thorough history
of the conflict.
To begin with, it is important to clarify what this
book is not—it is not a normal history book, or even
a simple backgrounder for the Korean War. For the
price, nearly $200, it is not marketed for the mass
market. Simply put, the book is an organized academic backgrounder for the war. The text is organized
into three parts, with each bringing to light an aspect of the war, with further chapters by academics
136

who tackle specific sections of the theme. The book’s
organization makes it extremely easy for any reader
to focus on a specific perspective of the war in the first
section, which covers the politics and background of
the various actors.
Next, the book tackles what we in the U.S. armed
forces understand as capacities and capabilities. In the
section titled “Tactics, Equipment, and Logistics,” a
number of experts detail aspects of the war that generally became a line or a paragraph in a general history,
or even a specialized book that gets put in that pile we
mean to read “some day.” With chapters such as “Naval
Operations” by historian Edward Marolda, formerly of
the Naval History and Heritage Command, or “Republic
of Korea Army” by Il-Song Park, head of the Military
History Department at the Korean Military Academy, it
is clear the editors found some top talent to contribute.
The final section addresses the flow of the fight,
with multiple chapters covering the highlights in depth.
Readers looking for a general history of the Korean
War will most likely find this book too detailed.
However, anyone seeking to understand the Korean
War in depth without having to invest the time to find
and read twenty individual books, or those looking to
write academically on the Korean War, will consider
this book worth its weight in gold.

Maj. Jonathan Freeman, U.S. Army Reserve,
London

THE AIR FORCE WAY OF WAR
U.S. Tactics and Training
after Vietnam
Brian Laslie, University Press of Kentucky,
Lexington, Kentucky, 2015, 260 pages

T

he U.S. Air Force in recent decades has created
a new conversation about the role of airpower
in conflict, after dominating performances in
Operations Desert Storm and Allied Force. Historian
Brian Laslie has thoroughly analyzed recent air operations and produced a thought-provoking treatise on
the importance of a post-Vietnam training renaissance
leading to U.S. success after Vietnam. Beginning in
the 1970s, the U.S. Air Force’s Tactical Air Command
(TAC) and an innovative team of young officers began
July-August 2016  MILITARY REVIEW