"This book is about the religious dynamics of soldiering for America from the Great War, which I mark as the emergence of the United States as a global power, to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, which future historians will certainly describe as national crises, perhaps even as engines of American decline. Hundreds of histories have been written of the wars waged in the so-called American century and of exercises of American might--both violent and not--that have, in one way or another, fallen short of war."-- Introduction
Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-230) and index