| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Peter S. Kindsvatter. American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Foreword by Russell F. Weigley. (Modern War Studies.) Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2003. Pp. xxiii, 432. $34.95.

"What is combat really going to be like?" Those going into harm's way for the first time ask themselves such a question. Peter S. Kindsvatter, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, set out to find answers that future soldiers would find useful in a number of oral histories and well over one hundred published volumes of letters, memoirs, autobiographies, and novels written by army and marine veterans of combat in the four major wars Americans have fought in the twentieth century. He argues that these published sources are sufficiently "representative" of the larger soldier population to explain what combat was like for all, and his defense of them is a thoughtful one. Moreover, he convinced this initially skeptical reader that the semifictional accounts (novels) written by combat vets are worthy sources for such an enterprise (pp. xvi-xviii). Kindsvatter also makes effective use of a number of relevant studies by military and academic social scientists, reminding us that these studies, most published during or shortly after the four wars, are valuable sources for historians.

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